U.S. Considers Sending Mechanized Infantry to Eastern Europe

WASHINGTON – The Pentagon considers sending up to 5,000 soldiers, heavy artillery and tanks to Eastern Europe in response to Russian support for Ukrainian separatists, the New York Times said Saturday.

If carried out, this will be the first time since the Cold War that the United States sends mechanized infantry to NATO’s extended borders in Eastern Europe as a dissuasive power.

It would also be the most serious step taken as yet by the United States in response to Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and Moscow’s support for pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine, a country long in the realm of Russian influence but which since 2014 has been strengthening its bonds with the West.

NATO has already stepped up military exercises on its eastern borders and has expanded surveillance by air and sea.

Since NATO extended its borders in 2004 to include the Baltic republics – Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania – the United States has avoided making any permanent deployment in the area bordering on Russia.

The level of troops and military equipment being considered would be similar to the amount kept for a decade in Kuwait following the Iraqi invasion that led to the first Gulf War in 1990, the newspaper said.

The proposal, a symbol of the commitment to the collective defense of NATO countries, must be approved by Defense Secretary Ash Carter with the support of U.S. President Barack Obama.

This go-ahead could come before the meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels at the end of this month.

Some European partners have been reticent during the crisis to enter into such mobilizations, which could push Russia to an escalation of its role in the conflict.

(Russian ) Mother and Daughter Slain, Dismembered in Mexico

TIJUANA, Mexico – The dismembered bodies of a Russian immigrant woman and her 12-year-old daughter were discovered inside a home in this northwestern Mexican city, the Baja California state Attorney General’s Office said.

Investigators are questioning the woman’s husband and older daughter, prosecutor Jose Maria Gonzalez Martinez told the media.

The bodies of Yulya Masney Safonchik, 42, and Valeria Lechenko Masney were discovered Wednesday night by police responding to a complaint from neighbors about a foul smell coming from the family’s home in the Playas de Tijuana neighborhood.

Homicide detectives found the victims’ remains stuffed into plastic bags.

The killings would have taken place on Tuesday, Gonzalez Martinez said, adding that Valeria’s older sister and the girls’ father were being interrogated.

Investigators have found evidence that the older daughter, who was not at the residence when the bodies were found, might have been involved in the crime, the prosecutor said.

Authorities eventually located the older daughter with several friends, who were also detained briefly until investigators were satisfied that they were not connected to the double-murder.

The older daughter has a history of substance abuse and the family had reported her missing on several occasions, Gonzalez Martinez said.

The girls’ father, also a Russian immigrant, told interrogators he did not live with Yulya and his daughters and that he only came to the house Wednesday night because neighbors informed him about the police activity at the residence, the prosecutor said. 

A ‘bad’ nuclear deal with Iran would jeopardize world peace

Most people would wish that President Obama succeeds in striking a deal with Iran that will see it shut down its nuclear centres, halt uranium enrichment and give up permanently the goal of obtaining a nuclear weapon. Iran however has shown next to no signs that it will forgo its nuclear weapons program. What most of us don't know is how ordinary Iranian citizens opposed to the mullahs' regime would feel about a "bad deal" that would see Tehran cheat its way to the bomb as it stalls world powers.

Amineh Qaraee, 34, and her brother Ehsan, 28, who fled the mullahs' persecution to Norway four years ago, have a striking story. As children, they witnessed their parents’ arrest and imprisonment for supporting the People’s Mojahedin Organization (PMOI/MEK), the main moderate Muslim group opposed to Khomeini’s theocratic rule.

"When I was just one-year-old my father got arrested, and two months later my mother got arrested with me and they took us to prison. There I had to live between people who got arrested and tortured just because they wanted freedom", Amineh recounts in a moving video testimonial. 

"I spent some months in prison until they let my mother deliver me to my grandparents. My mother was in prison for more than two years and my father for four years."

Soon after his release, Amineh’s father, a teacher by profession, was again arrested for his political opinions.

"Finally they informed us that they had killed my father and 30,000 other political activists even though all of them were sentenced to some years in prison, not execution”, she adds before breaking down into tears. This has prompted them to join the cause of supporting human rights and democratic change in Iran through different activities, including promoting petitions and other initiatives through facebook, twitter and youtube.

The Qaraees are not the only families of victims of the mullahs left to deal with the torment of losing their loved ones. The Tehran regime has executed more than 120,000 political prisoners, mostly MEK supporters, in the past 36 years. Their families who live in daily agony number in the millions. An overwhelming majority of Iranians have been harmed or affected in some form by the regime in its 36-year rule.

A robust, strong deal with strong inspection regime will manifest Ayatollahs’ weakness and strategic deadlock and embolden Iranian people for their rights. Yet, like many other Iranians opposed to the regime, Amineh and Ehsan are nervous that a “bad nuclear deal” allowing Tehran to go nuclear while duping the West would strengthen the regime.  Such an outcome will lead to the situation where the Revolutionary Guards would feel strengthened and would suppress any dissent with even greater brutality. The world would then become silent in the face of all the crimes of this regime.

As the 30 June deadline for a nuclear deal between Tehran and the P5+1 world powers draws closer, most of Iran’s neighbours are also wary that Tehran would make a false pledge to forgo its uranium enrichment for weaponization in return for having international sanctions lifted, and all the while secretly building its nuclear weapon. Rightly so.

Former Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is on record as having said in the early 1990s that if Iran succeeded in obtaining a nuclear bomb, no one would be able to stop it from exporting its Islamic revolution.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has made no secret of Tehran’s military, financial and logistical support to keep Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in power. Photographs of Iran’s senior Revolutionary Guards Qods Force commanders are intentionally published in state media to show the regime’s military presence in Iraq.

Iran’s Arab neighbours and Israel fear that a nuclear bomb would make Iran the region’s undisputed hegemon with a keen desire to expand its borders.

The concern over Tehran’s abysmal human rights record is shared by many of our allies in Europe.

Last week, in a statement signed by over 220 members of the European Parliament, representing all political groups in the Parliament from the European Union’s all 28 member states, European lawmakers slammed Iran’s gross human rights violations and called on Iranian regime to “end the executions, free political prisoners, stop the repression of women and respect the rights and freedoms of the Iranian people.” The statement infuriated Tehran.

Amineh and Ehsan plan to join Iranian expatriates in a grand rally 13 June in support of democratic change by the main opposition coalition National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI). The council, led by its charismatic President-elect Maryam Rajavi, has a 10-point platform calling for a democratic pluralistic republic based on universal suffrage, freedom of expression, abolition of torture and death penalty, separation of religion and state, a non-nuclear Iran, an independent judicial system, rights for minorities, peaceful coexistence in the region, gender equality and commitment to Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  Some 100,000 people took part in a similar rally last year.

The rally will also draw several hundred international lawmakers, personalities and former officials of both Democrat and Republican administrations, who support Maryam Rajavi’s platform. There will be a strong show from parliamentarians of Arab countries who ardently support a change of regime in Tehran that would transform their Shiite neighbour into a peaceful partner. Parliamentary delegations from across Europe will also be present to support the call for democracy.

According to Amineh, "The huge gathering in Paris on June 13 introduces the alternative to the rule of mullahs in Iran.”

“We can learn from the history that our resistance and its members, who have made so many sacrifices to bring about freedom and democracy to Iran, and we won’t stop until we achieve these goals”, Ehsan says. This is a struggle that the world community should support, or else the whole world will be held to ransom by the criminal mullahs with nuclear weapons.

It is only prudent for the West to listen to Iranian dissidents as well in formulating a sound policy on Iran. As a human rights researcher I shall be attending the rally which will be broadcast live.

Tanter, a professor emeritus, University of Michigan, is president of the American Committee on Human Rights.

REGIME CHANGE IN IRAN-13, 2015 GATHERING (LIVE STREAMING )

The Conference for Democratic Change in Iran, June 13th

 
U.N. Monitor Says Iran is Worsening on Rights, Despite Pledges”
“Thousands in Iran Protest Acid Attacks on Women”
“Executions Surge in Iran after Nuclear Talks”
“Iran’s Supreme Leader Threatens Nuclear Talks Walkout”

If you paid attention to the news in recent months you saw headlines like these. Reports on social upheaval, labored progress, fundamentalist violence, and government retribution against its own people in Iran. On June 13th, Iranians from around the world will gather along with some 1,000 political figures, activists, and religious leaders in Paris for the Conference for Democratic Change in Iran. The conference will focus on key issues facing Iran and the Middle East, including the state of human rights, the Iranian nuclear talks, the threat of Islamic fundamentalism, and the internment of Iranians at Camp Liberty. Speakers from around the world will outline these issues and explore possible institutional and organizational solutions.

This year’s theme, “Regime Change in Iran, We Can & We Must”, highlights both the need and the capacity for change in the country right now. Already, the crimes committed by President Hassan Rouhani and his fundamentalist regime are being challenged by an incipient global push to create a free, democratic, non-nuclear Iran. If the past year is any indicator, the next twelve months should prove to be watershed year for Iran.

This past October, thousands of people protesting acid attacks on Iranian women created a global media frenzy and incited the outrage of the international community. In May, after more than one hundred people were killed in politically motivated executions in April, UN experts called upon Iran to end the death penalty once and for all. Increased destabilization in the Middle East and the rise of ISIS have also prompted a concerted international effort to bring an end to the Islamic fundamentalism that plagues countries like Iran.

As negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program continue, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei hopes to stall progress. In a speech given on May 20th, Khamenei denounced what he said were the escalating demands of the P5+1 and declared that interviews with Iranian nuclear scientists by international inspectors were completely off the table. In the same speech he also stated that “we will not allow foreigners to carry out inspections of any military sites.” But as the P5+1 continues negotiations with Rouhani’s representatives in Geneva, steps have been taken towards an historic agreement on Iran’s nuclear program.

One issue that hasn’t gotten much attention recently is the horrendous conditions of the prisoners at Camp Liberty. Since 2012, when they were transferred from Camp Ashraf, thousands of Iranians sympathetic to a democratic Iran have been subjected to what the UN has labeled “arbitrary detention”. The camp is run by Iraqi Col. Sadeq Mohammed Kazem, who is wanted by a Spanish court for opening fire on Camp Ashraf residents in the massacres of July 2009 and April 2011. Residents of the camp have no freedom of movement or access to outsiders, including relatives, reporters, and humanitarian workers. Several preventable deaths have been reported due to sub par medical facilities. The conference will look at ways to draw international attention to the atrocities committed against these prisoners. Camp Liberty has unfortunately receded in the international consciousness as it has become by degrees forcibly isolated from the outside world.
Change is coming to Iran. Populist uprisings, nuclear negotiations, and increased attention from the UN and the international community have set the stage for a dramatic shift in the country. But the current regime will not loosen their grip on Iran willingly. “The regime is trying to destroy every aspect of the democratic process in the region,” states President of the Iranian ResistanceMaryam Rajavi.

On June 13th, Iranian communities are gathering in Paris to stand up to the religious dictatorship that has a hold on their country, and to call on Western nations to develop policies to address the rapidly changing dynamics within the region. The conference promises to lay bare the issues facing Iran and to galvanize the international community to expand its efforts to support a democratic, non-fundamentalist, and non-nuclear Iran as the only peaceful solution to the ever growing problem of Islamic extremism. Those already planning to attend the event encourage all those concerned with these issues to attend or to watch the event live on the thirteenth.

Salinas Cops Beat the Living crap out of Mentally Ill Man with Batons

Three Men Executed by ISIS in Mosque in Libya