Islamic Speakers Bureau of Arizona Recognizes Local Multi-Faith Community Leaders for Building Bridges through Education

By Nidah Chatriwala

Rohina Malik (Left: playwright and actress), Azra Hussain (Center: president of Islamic Speakers Bureau of Arizona) and Alex Kronemer (Right: writer and documentary producer)

On Oct. 19, the Islamic Speakers Bureau of Arizona (ISBA) held its annual Building Bridges Awards Dinner at the Phoenix Airport Marriott. The spectacular event had over 110 attendees, which included award recipients and special guests from the local multi-faith community.

The ISBA Building Bridges Award is given to individuals or organizations in Arizona who have shown a sincere commitment to building bridges of understanding between different communities through education. This year, Charles Johnson, Mumina Malik, Suzanne Bassal, Rheem K., Todd Daniels and Dr. Bruce Johnson were recognized for their outstanding efforts for uniting Arizona’s multi-faith community by spreading knowledge. 

Prior to the awards ceremony, Alex Kronemer, who is a well-known writer and documentary producer, gave a lecture on the Abrahamic traditions through a metaphysical perspective giving the audience something to think about even after the event had concluded.

The entertainer of the night was actress and playwright, Rohina Malik, who performed her most talked about skit, ‘Unveiled’. Her powerful performances made the audience laugh at her humorous bits and cry as she shared real life tragedies happened to those she met throughout her life.

These two guests were a perfect fit for this year’s awards dinner because their mission and ISBA’s mission are the same. The only difference is the medium they use to educate about Islam and Muslims. Kronemer uses his documentary films whereas Malik uses performing arts as her medium to educate.

“We use human beings presenting same material in two different formats.  Their mission and our mission are the same,” enthused Azra Hussain, president of ISBA.

The event educated, entertained, enlightened and even encouraged the audience to take their very first step toward building a solid multi-faith community.

“It was really fun seeing everyone come together and celebrate positive things going on in the community” expressed Ellie Chesko, graduate student.

Arizona State University student, Amberlyn Williams said, “It was an enlightening and fascinating event; I went in as a volunteer helping out a friend, and am now considering joining the Abrahamic Faiths Panel!”

“I think it’s a great way to build a trust between different religions and cultures. The best way to live in peace is if we understand who we’re living with, and I think the dinner did a wonderful job in conveying needed information” shared Sophia Qamar, high school student.

To learn more about ISBA, visit: www.isb-az.org.

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Samah el Tantawy honored for research on smart traffic lights

University of Toronto Engineering graduate Samah El-Tantawy’s PhD dissertation on developing a smart traffic light control system has won two prestigious international awards.

El-Tantawy’s system uses game theory and artificial intelligence to ‘teach’ lights in real time how to adjust to traffic patterns.

Her dissertation won first place this month in the best PhD dissertation competition from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Intelligent Transportation Systems Society (ITSS). El-Tantawy (CivE PhD 1T2) also won second place from The Institute of Operations Research and Management Sciences (INFORMS) for its George B. Dantzig Dissertation Award.

El-Tantawy, who worked under the supervision of Professor Baher Abdulhai (CivE), Director ofThe Toronto Intelligent Transportation Systems Centre and Testbed, has high praise for her supervisor’s role in helping her win the awards.

“He has the critical thinking skills that made me think outside of the box,” she said. “But he was not only supportive on technical matters; he also encouraged me through his positive energy.”

“I offer my heartfelt congratulations to Samah El-Tantawy for being recognized for her innovative PhD dissertation,” said Cristina Amon, Dean, Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering. “Her development of the smart traffic light control system is an excellent example of the creativity and global leadership of U of T Engineers.”

Professor Abdulhai and Dr. El-Tantawy have made headlines for developing the system for which she won the awards. It is known as MARLIN-ATSC, for Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning for Integrated Network of Adaptive Traffic Signal Controllers.

Tests of the MARLIN system on 60 downtown Toronto intersections at rush hour showed a reduction in delays of up to 40 per cent. The test also showed MARLIN cut travel times by as much as 26 per cent.

Pious Ali elected to Portland school board

PORTLAND,MAINE–Pious Ali, a long time social worker, has been elected to the Portland School Board. His election is widely being hailed for it is the first time that a African born American and a Muslim has been elected in the history of the board.

Ali, 44, was born in the African nation of Ghana. He worked as a freelance photojournalist, often contributing to an English-language newspaper based in the nation’s capital. Ali moved to New York in 2000, and Portland in 2002.

He is the current Director and Co-founder of the King Fellows, a Portland based youth group dedicated to creating meaningful opportunities for youth leadership and civic engagement based on the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  Often working with diverse groups of individuals who are predominantly immigrants, Pious has built strong relationships with many communities, non profits, institutions and leaders from diverse backgrounds.

Ali had spent many summers working as a facilitator for Seeds of Peace (Maine Seeds).  He has also worked as a Site Coordinator for PROP’S Peer Leader Program, youth worker for Preble Street’s Lighthouse Shelter, and PROP’S Parkside Neighborhood Center.  At Volunteers of America, he was a Residential Counselor, working with formerly incarcerated men on addressing issues such as substance abuse and mental health as well as getting them ready to go back into their communities.

With the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP- Portland branch) Pious Ali served as Education and Community Engagement Coordinator.  He has also volunteered at Long Creek Youth Development Center.He  is also studying Sociology at Southern Maine Community College.

Muslim students at UNC display Muslim life in art

The “Passion in Practice”, a multimedia exhibit will be on display at the University of North Carolina’s Student Union Art Gallery for the month of November. Its creators are two juniors   Aisha Anwar and Layla Quran.

The display shows different aspects of lived Islam. “Islam is a religion that can be interpreted in so many ways and through so many different passions,” Quran told the Daily Tar Heel. “There’s so much room for possibility — you can interpret it in a way that fits your lifestyle.”

Talk on Islam held at Darien library

DARIEN, IL–The Indian Prairie Public Library in Darien held a talk on Islam by popular cookbook author Yvonne Maffei.  She talked about Muslim dietary practices and fasting in the month of Ramadhan.
Participants also tasted a date dish especially created by Maffei.

U.S. Rep. Bill Foster, D-11th of Naperville also spoke at the event and congratulated the library for serving as a bridge between cultures.

Hartford Seminary receives copy of Nahj al-Balagha

Lebanese scholar Seyed Sadeq Musavi consulted some 80,000 scholarly works and spent 25 years assembling “the ultimate edition” of the classic collection of the Imam ‘Ali’s sayings, sermons, orations and letters, known as “Nahj Al-Balagha” (The Course of Eloquence). On Thursday, he donated a copy of the elaborately designed and decorated book to Hartford Seminary’s library.

Prof. Mahmoud Ayoub first met Mr. Musavi through Seminary Corporators Dr. Ali Shakibai and Syed Raza. It was through this association that Mr. Musavi was invited to the seminary to give a talk about his book and research.

“He visited our library and was deeply impressed with it,” Professor Ayoub said. “More than 20 students and faculty participated in this interesting event.”

Mr. Musavi’s book, entitled “Tamam Nahj al-Balagha,” is in the original Arabic. According to Seminary Librarian Steven Blackburn, it is the only work published outside of Iran that has been selected as a basic textbook for training clerics in Shi’i seminaries such as Qom. An English translation is anticipated in the future.

Of the 80,000 scholarly works consulted in the research process, more than 1,200 were found to contain seminal work that Mr. Musavi used to provide reference materials that were missing or incomplete from the original text.

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By Adil James, TMO

The audience at the ICD lecture.

Saturday November 9, 2013–Rochester Hills–The auditorium and common room at IAGD were transformed into a mini-hospital Saturday morning and early afternoon, where about 200 people from the community were able to get medical attention for everything from weight and blood pressure to diabetes screening and talking to all manner of specialists from neurology to dentistry.

The event began at 10:30 and lasted until 2:30.  About 60 medical professionals were present–many of them Muslim but many were not Muslim as well.  Most of the patients however were from the IAGD community.

The event was coordinated largely by Dr. Usman Master, in concert with Beaumont Hospital where he works.  Dr. Master is a kidney specialist, or nephrologist.
Many other large health institutions also participated, including Blue Cross Blue Shield, which provided an “Obamacare Table” which seemed to focus largely on developing more business for BCBS, and briefly discussing Obamacare.

The format for the event was that patients would enter the large auditorium hall, which is perhaps 4,000 square feet of open space, then they would immediately be weighed and measured for height and blood pressure.

Then they would go to a small central waiting area, and from there they were taken to a set of tables where the patients discussed their medical condition with general practitioners. 

There were approximately 10 general practitioners meeting with patients at this point.

After this general consultation, the patients were referred to a lab where blood tests were being conducted. They also were referred directly to specialists.

Specialists available at the event included departments for urology, internal medicine, family medicine, dentistry, child psychiatry, hematology / oncology, breast cancer awareness, nutrition, endocrinology / diabetes care, and dermatology.

Patients needing ongoing care were referred to the Huda Clinic, which is based at the Muslim Center on Davison Hwy.

Dr. Master, who helped coordinate the event, is also associated with the Huda Clinic and he and all of the many volunteers and supporters did an extremely professional job of transforming this utilitarian mosque into a “hospital for a day” clinic.

Volunteers were very happy with the turnout of the approximately 200 patients who took advantage of the free health care.

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By Yeganeh Torbati, Steve Stecklow and Babak Dehghanpisheh

(Reuters) – Two months before his death in 1989, Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini tried to solve a problem unleashed by the revolution he led a decade earlier.

Land and other assets were being seized en masse from purported enemies of the young theocratic state. Khomeini issued a two-paragraph order asking two trusted aides to ensure that much of the proceeds from the sale of the properties would go to charity.

The result was a new organization – known as Setad, or “The Headquarters” – that reported to Iran’s supreme leader. As one of the aides later recounted, Setad was intended to oversee the confiscations and then wind down after two years.

Twenty-four years later, Setad is an economic giant. Khomeini’s successor as supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has used it to amass assets worth tens of billions of dollars, rivaling the holdings of the late shah. Setad’s portfolio includes banks, farms, cement companies, a licensed contraceptives maker, apartments seized from Iranians living abroad and much more.

Reuters found no evidence that Khamenei puts these assets to personal use. Instead, Setad’s holdings underpin his power over Iran.

To make Setad’s asset acquisitions possible, governments under Khamenei’s watch systematically legitimized the practice of confiscation and gave the organization control over much of the seized wealth, a Reuters investigation has found. The supreme leader, judges and parliament over the years have issued a series of bureaucratic edicts, constitutional interpretations and judicial decisions bolstering Setad. The most recent of these declarations came in June, just after the election of Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani.

The thinking behind this painstaking legal effort is unclear. The Iranian president’s office and the foreign ministry didn’t respond to requests for comment. Iran’s embassy in the United Arab Emirates issued a statement calling Reuters’ findings “scattered and disparate” and said “none has any basis.” It didn’t elaborate.

Setad’s director general of public relations, Hamid Vaezi, said in an email that the Reuters series is “far from realities and is not correct” but didn’t go into specifics. He said Setad plans to challenge sanctions imposed on it earlier this year by the U.S. Treasury Department.

But the legal machinations served several purposes. The decrees enabled Setad to beat back rival institutions seeking to take property in the name of the supreme leader. A ruling on the constitutionality of privatizations smoothed Setad’s expansion beyond real estate and into owning and investing in companies.

The attention to legal procedure also allows Setad and Khamenei to justify a practice that Khomeini had cited as a reason for overthrowing the shah in 1979: property confiscations. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the former king, inherited his fortune from his father, who enriched himself in the first half of the 20th century by expropriating vast amounts of land from his subjects. In October 2010, Khamenei invoked that memory in a speech.

“Our people were living under the pressure of corrupt, tyrannical and greedy governments for many years,” Khamenei told officials in the clerical city of Qom, according to an English-language transcript on his official website. The shah’s father “grabbed the ownership of any developed piece of land in all parts of the country…. They accumulated wealth. They accumulated property. They accumulated jewelry for themselves.”

The Islamic Revolution promised Iranians a new era of justice, governed strictly in accordance with sharia, Islamic law. Khomeini outlined a “Velayat-e Faqih,” or Guardianship of the Jurist – a government ruled by a cleric who spurns personal wealth, values the law above all else and rigorously submits himself to it.

“Islamic government … is not a tyranny, where the head of state can deal arbitrarily with the property and lives of the people, making use of them as he wills,” Khomeini wrote in a 1970 book.
Iranian attorneys who have battled Setad say the governments under Khamenei’s watch have not lived up to those ideals. Instead, they allege, the government makes aggressive use of the law to take property from citizens – in particular, Article 49 of the Iranian constitution, which provides for seizing illicit assets from criminals.

“It is a very powerful tool,” said Mohammad Nayyeri, a Britain-based lawyer who worked on several property confiscation cases involving Setad before leaving Iran in 2010. “It opens the door to corruption. There is no limitation. The private ownership and private life of people are not respected.”

Setad has emerged as a mainstay for Khamenei. It provides an independent source of revenue to finance his rule even as years of sanctions imposed by the West have squeezed Iran’s economy hard. The story of how he used the law to build up Setad is central to understanding how he has managed in some ways to gain even more power than his predecessor.

A ONE-ROOM HOUSE

The supreme leader, now 74 years old, comes from a modest background. He grew up in the holy city of Mashhad in Iran’s northeast. His father, Ayatollah Javad Husseini Khamenei, was a religious scholar of ethnic Azeri descent and a prayer leader at a local mosque.

“The house only had one room and a gloomy basement. Whenever a guest came to see my father … we had to go to the basement until they left,” Khamenei is quoted as saying in a biography posted on his official website.

The young Ali Khamenei was known as Seyyed Ali, a title used by families who claim descent from the Prophet Mohammad. While he chose the same calling as his father, Khamenei embraced radically different views.

The elder Khamenei was a traditionalist opposed to mixing religion and politics. The son took up with the growing Islamist revolutionary cause. One relative says the young cleric appeared as interested in the movement’s political dimension as its spiritual side.

“He came across as a modernist or progressive cleric,” said Mahmoud Moradkhani, a nephew who opposes Khamenei’s rule and lives in exile in Paris. “He was not a part of the fundamentalists … and only followed the revolutionary movement.”

In the early 1960s Khamenei studied under Khomeini in Qom. The young cleric began agitating against the shah’s pro-Western regime. In 1963, Khamenei served his first of many terms in prison when, at the age of 24, he was detained by security forces for his political activities. Later that year he was imprisoned for ten days in his home city of Mashhad, where he was put under “severe torture,” according to his official biography.

People who knew Khamenei in his formative years describe a complex man. He was an uncompromising revolutionary and Islamist ideologue, but he also had a sociable side, with a sense of humor.
“He has maybe two different personalities,” said Houshang Asadi, a dissident journalist who spent months sharing a prison cell with Khamenei in 1974. Asadi recalled one occasion when Khamenei “stood under the window in the little cell, talking to God and crying.” On other occasions, “he was a simple man like me. We had different opinions about many things, but we argued, we talked, we laughed, we were joking.”

Five years later came the revolution. The shah fled, Khomeini returned in triumph from exile, the clerics emerged pre-eminent. According to historians, Khamenei, then 40, helped found the Islamic Republic Party and went on to serve in increasingly powerful posts.

In 1979, months after taking power, Khomeini pushed through a new constitution that enshrined his concept of the Guardianship of the Jurist, a republic ruled by a leader who is the foremost expert in Islamic law. Among the charter’s 175 articles were two that would prove instrumental for Setad. One, Article 45, which deals with public property, gave the government the right to use “abandoned” land and “property of undetermined ownership.”

Even more important in the end was Article 49, which allows for the confiscation of wealth acquired through criminal activities. It prescribed broad safeguards against arbitrary confiscations. In practice, this law rarely was followed.

“Article 49 is so broadly written that it allows confiscation and expropriation on the flimsiest of excuses,” said Shaul Bakhash, an Iran historian at George Mason University in Virginia. He says property of his own was confiscated by court order in 1992.

Wholesale expropriation of wealth became a hallmark of the early republic. It was a chaotic time. Iraq invaded Iran in 1980. Years of brutal trench warfare followed. There were shortages of rice, milk, meat and fuel. The new regime faced internal threats, carrying out tit-for-tat killings as it consolidated power. And the new state began seizing assets from the deposed royal family and other perceived enemies.

“Bonyads,” or foundations, were among the first beneficiaries of this transfer of wealth. One of the biggest was Bonyad Mostazafan, or the Foundation of the Oppressed, which took over many of the royal family’s assets. It remains in business. A Mostazafan official did not respond to a request for an interview.

“This situation in reality created a struggle and a sort of competition between the revolutionary units and institutions … for each to find the best properties and introduce them to the court as candidates for confiscation,” said Hossein Raeesi, a human-rights attorney who practiced in Iran for 20 years and handled some property confiscation cases.

According to a study published in 1989 in the International Journal of Middle East Studies, in 1982 Bonyad Mostazafan held 2,786 real-estate properties it obtained by court-sanctioned confiscation. Its real estate included a building on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan built in the 1970s by the shah’s charity, the Pahlavi Foundation.

The revolutionaries also began turning on some of their own. In 1981, Khamenei helped lead a successful effort to impeach Abolhassan Banisadr, who in 1980 had become the republic’s first elected president. Khamenei, then in parliament, introduced a 14-point list of reasons to drive out Banisadr. Less than 17 months after taking office, Banisadr was declared an enemy of the state and fled to Paris, where he now lives.

Later that year, Khamenei survived a bomb attack by a leftist insurgent group that disabled his right arm. The explosives were placed in a tape recorder in the Abuzar mosque in Tehran where he was giving a speech. Two months later, Banisadr’s successor as president was assassinated by the same group. In October 1981, Khamenei was elected overwhelmingly as the republic’s third president.

“IN THE NAME OF THE REVOLUTION”

In 1982, with factions and organizations feuding over properties, Khomeini tried to control the chaos, issuing a decree that banned confiscations without a judge’s order. “It is unacceptable and intolerable that in the name of the revolution and being revolutionary-minded, God forbid, an injustice should be done to someone,” Khomeini declared in the order.

Two years later, in 1984, parliament created a special class of property confiscation courts – dubbed “Article 49 courts” – in each of Iran’s provinces. They were a branch of the Revolutionary Courts, which had been established to dispense justice to purported enemies of the republic.

The Article 49 courts continue to operate today, but they failed to end the free-for-all. “In practice, the establishment of the Article 49 courts systematized and continued the expropriations, and even today the confiscations continue,” Raeesi said.

The war with Iraq ended in 1988. It left hundreds of thousands of Iranian soldiers and civilians dead. That meant many mouths to feed.
In April 1989, Khomeini issued his brief order that marked the genesis of Setad, whose full name in Persian is “Setad Ejraiye Farmane Hazrate Emam” – the Headquarters for Executing the Order of the Imam.
He directed two senior officials to take over all “sales, servicing and managing” of properties “of unknown ownership and without owners.” The revenues were to be spent on sharia issues “and as much as possible” to help seven bonyads and charities he named. The officials were to use the money to support “the families of the martyrs, veterans, the missing, prisoners of war and the downtrodden.”

At this point, though he had been president for more than seven years, Khamenei wasn’t counted among Iran’s first rank of power brokers. The presidency had been stripped of key powers during Banisadr’s short rule, because he was viewed as a threat to Iran’s new clerical elite.

After Khomeini’s death in June 1989, Iran’s Assembly of Experts selected Khamenei as his successor. Some senior clerics regarded him as unqualified for the job of supreme leader. He hadn’t achieved the required rank among Shi’ite clerics that the constitution stipulated. But key supporters backed a constitutional amendment that sealed his elevation, and Khamenei took office in July.

One of his early acts was to order a cleric to follow up on the creation of Setad. The new organization’s decisions, he said in an edict that September, “should be just and based on sharia and without negligence.”

The new supreme leader quickly set about cultivating the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, an elite military group that had emerged from the war as one of Iran’s most powerful institutions.

Droves of its soldiers had returned in 1988 from the battlefield and were seeking opportunity. He began securing their support by helping them receive lucrative reconstruction contracts.

According to Mohsen Sazegara, a co-founder of the Revolutionary Guards who is now in exile in the United States, Khamenei allowed the Guards to enter the construction business. That opening eventually enabled an engineering division of the Guards to evolve into a major conglomerate.

In time the Guards became a pillar of Khamenei’s power. So too did Setad.

By the early 1990s, courts were seizing assets and turning them over to Setad, according to documents reviewed by Reuters. The organization began keeping funds from property sales, rather than redistributing all the proceeds. It isn’t clear when Setad began retaining funds or what percentage of the revenue it keeps.

Khamenei, meanwhile, took pains to show Iranians that he was above exploiting his high office. On a visit to his boyhood home in Mashhad in August 1995, he told the story of how while he was president, a next-door neighbor erected a tall building overlooking his yard.

“As a result, my mother could no longer step in the yard without wearing a chador,” a long garment worn by devout women in Iran. He asked the neighbor to reconsider, according to an account by Khamenei on his official website, but the owner wouldn’t listen.

Khamenei dropped the matter. “Such events bear testimony to the fact that worldly positions and financial means never cause individuals to regard themselves as distinct from the general public, or that they are entitled to live in greater comfort,” Khamenei said.

In 1997, the reformist Mohammad Khatami was elected president. Iran’s judiciary soon moved to shield Setad from scrutiny. The General Inspection Office is an anti-corruption body that monitors many Iranian institutions and reports to the head of the judiciary, who is appointed by Khamenei. That year, a government legal commission declared that the GIO had no right to inspect Setad unless the supreme leader requested it to do so.

Setad still faced competitors. Among its main rivals for seized assets, according to attorney Mohammad Nayyeri, was another organization: Sazemane Jamavari va Forooshe Amvale Tamliki, or Department for the Collection and Sale of Acquired Property, which is controlled by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Finance. In 2000, the judiciary adopted a bylaw granting Setad exclusive authority over property taken in the name of the supreme leader.

AN EXPEDIENT RULING

Setad began expanding into corporate investments, taking advantage of another legal initiative by Khamenei.

In 2004, Khamenei ordered a review of Article 44 of the constitution, which mandates state ownership of critical industries. The Expediency Council, a state advisory body appointed by the supreme leader, issued a new interpretation of Article 44 allowing the privatization of major industries.

“What was the goal?” he asked in a 2011 speech. “The goal was to create a competitive economy with the presence of the private sector and its investments in the economy of the country.”

In 2006, with the country facing a ballooning budget deficit under its new hardline president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Khamenei issued an executive order to privatize 80 percent of the shares of some state-owned companies. The targets included banks, insurers and oil-and-gas firms. The step, he said, would change the “government’s role from direct ownership and management of companies to policymaking, guidance and monitoring.”

In 2009, Setad emerged as a victor in Iran’s biggest state asset sale, the privatization of Telecommunication Co of Iran (TCI).

Through a subsidiary, Setad held a 38 percent stake in a consortium that was awarded majority control of the telecommunications provider, Iran’s largest, according to Setad documents seen by Reuters. The other big winner was the Revolutionary Guards, which controlled most of the winning consortium.

Even before then, Setad had been drawing attention from the reformist wing of the establishment. During Khatami’s second term, moderate members of parliament sought to investigate Setad, according to Nayyeri. The Guardian Council, a body of conservative clerics and jurists who are directly or indirectly appointed by Khamenei, issued a declaration that Setad was beyond parliament’s authority, Nayyeri said.

Elections in 2008 brought a strongly conservative parliament deeply loyal to Khamenei. In one of its first steps, parliament amended its bylaws to limit its own power to audit institutions under the supreme leader’s supervision, except with his permission.

“This is the reason why no one knows what is going on inside these organizations,” says Sazegara, the Guards co-founder.

In 2009, hundreds of thousands of Iranians in the so-called Green Movement protested the re-election of President Ahmadinejad. Amid the unrest, one of the two men who established Setad spoke out against the organization.

That man, Mehdi Karoubi, had emerged as a major reformist politician, serving as speaker of parliament and making unsuccessful bids for the presidency in 2005 and 2009. After the 2009 vote, he wrote a letter to a longtime rival of Khamenei in which he reported that Khomeini had intended Setad to last just two years.

Karoubi went on to accuse Setad and Khamenei’s other major power base, the Revolutionary Guards, of corruption. In an apparent reference to the TCI privatization, he wrote that they “put the shares of a government ministry in their own name within half an hour. And in the name of privatization they create another saga that continues and completes the recent saga of the presidential elections?”
Karoubi has been under house arrest in Iran since 2011 and couldn’t be reached for comment.

Khamenei is sensitive to suggestions that he and his appointees receive special treatment under the law. “No one is above supervision,” he has said in a speech, according to a page on his website titled “The Supreme Leader’s View of Supervision.” “Even the leader is not above supervision, let alone the organizations linked to the leader,” he said. “Therefore, everyone should receive supervision, including those who govern the country. Government by its very nature entails accumulation of power and wealth. That is to say, national wealth and social and political power are entrusted to a few government officials. As a result, they must be supervised.”

Driving home the point, he added: “I welcome supervision, and I am strongly opposed to evading it. Personally, the more supervision I receive, the happier I will be.”

Today, Khamenei’s power in some respects exceeds that of his predecessor. He lacks the religious authority of Khomeini but has far greater resources at his disposal.

Khomeini operated from a modest house in northern Tehran with a small staff.

Khamenei lives in a large compound in Tehran. The grounds contain a variety of buildings, including a large hall where Khamenei gives speeches. Setad helps to finance his administrative offices, which are known as Beite Rahbar, the Leader’s House, according to a former senior Setad employee and other people familiar with its operations. It employs about 500 people, many recruited from the Guards and security services.

Setad itself remains veiled from the public eye. It is led today by Mohammad Mokhber, a Khamenei loyalist who is also the chairman of Iran’s Sina Bank, according to its website. The European Union sanctioned him in 2010 but lifted the sanctions last year, without any explanation.

Setad reveals little about its income, expenditures or staffing. Its headquarters is in a large gray concrete building with small windows in the heart of Tehran’s commercial district.

“You won’t even notice it even if you are walking by,” a former employee said.

In June, Supreme Leader Khamenei congratulated Rouhani upon his election as president. That same month, the chief justice, a Khamenei appointee, issued a fresh declaration of support for Setad. According to the Iranian Students’ News Agency, Justice Sadeq Larijani told lower courts that Setad’s old rival, the Department for the Collection and Sale of Acquired Property, had no authority to take property in the supreme leader’s name.

Setad, the justice reminded the courts, “is the only authorized organization in the issue of property related to the supreme leader.”

(Edited by Michael Williams and Simon Robinson)

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By Susan Schwartz, TMO

The Levantine Cultural Center hosted an informative and thought provoking event last week at their Los Angeles headquarters.

Titled: LAPD Spying, Civil Liberties, Homeland Security, and the Israeli Connection, the event was one in a series of continuing discussions about the Middle East.

The organizers were the Levantine Cultural Center and LA Jews for Peace. The sponsoring organization was Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace.

Two speakers prominent in their fields, Hamid Khan and Max Blumenthal, were featured.

Hamid Khan described himself as a Community Organizer and a civil rights activist.He is an organizer for the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition. The Coalition wants to expose to the public the spying techniques and the goals of Los Angeles law enforcement which represent a de facto nullification of our civil liberties.

The Coalition seeks to raise such awareness with the goals of advancing a conversation on the existing conditions and building a coalition to oppose it.

There are two parts to the LAPD program. The first is the use of SARs – Suspicious Activities Reports. If a person engages in an activity that the observing officer deems “suspicious” – suspicious being subjective and un quantifiable – the officer will write up a SAR report. The person observed will not be told nor will he have access to it, but it will follow him wherever he goes for the rest of his life. The “suspicious” activity may include such benign actions as using binoculars, taking photographs, or inquiring of a business what their hours of operation are.

The second part is termed iwatch. It is a restatement of the “if you see something, say something” idea. It makes members of a community inform on their neighbors and report to the LAPD. It is a form of infiltration by the police of local neighborhoods and its twin is racial profiling.

Max Blumenthal is the author of the best selling book:  “Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel.” The topic of his address, which segued perfectly into Mr. Khan’s presentation, is that we have in the United States the Israelification of national security. Minority and progressive communities are the first victims of the growing police state surveillance. In this, these groups are the miner’s canary, for eventually we are all in danger of losing our civil liberties.

In the early days of the state of Israel, survival was not a certainty. Some 80% of Gazans were forced out of Israel, and were described by Israel as infiltrators. Zionism was and is a settler – colonial policy. Israel had to be armed and ready at all times, and this led to the development of surveillance techniques and weaponry no other nation had. Israel could not live with Gazans, and, not only did they in effect exile them, they made them into a laboratory. What better place to test Israeli security apparatus but Gaza?

During the Cold War Israeli expertise went to Guatemala and apartheid South Africa. The Israeli soldier became the model for the Guatemalan soldier; the Israeli’s Uzi became the Guatemalan soldier’s weapon of choice.

No nation had to be on its guard like Israel. No nation needed to develop its surveillance and oppressive materiel like Israel. And, what’s more, no nation had a ready made area in which to field test its weapons as Israel did in Gaza and the West Bank.

Israel is pushing terrorism with Islam as the enemy and “as having an insatiable crocodile appetite.”

The United States adopted a drone policy from Israel, the latter using it in Gaza with the resulting disproportionate force. Most of Israel’s technology goes to developing nations and to our cities’ police departments.

In the United States pro-Israel groups sponsor trips to Israel by law enforcement officers. In Israel these men and women are taught Israel’s version of the Holocaust, and they learn to blur the distinction between criminals and terrorists.

The mayor of Washington, D. C said that “Israel is the Harvard of anti-terrorism.”

A lively question and answer session followed the presentation. So intriguing was the subject matter and so learned were the speakers that the session continued for two days after the event via e mail discussion.

The following web sites will be of interest to the reader: The Levantine Cultural Center at: www.levantinecenter,org; LA Jews for Peace: www.lajewsforpeace.org; Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace: www.icujp.org.

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Soldiers carry a body bag for loading onto a truck after a family have identified the deceased in the aftermath of super typhoon Haiyan in Tacloban city, central Philippines November 13, 2013. The government has been overwhelmed by the force of the typhoon, which decimated large swathes of Leyte province where local officials have said they feared 10,000 people died, many drowning in a tsunami-like surge of seawater. REUTERS/Edgar Su

Authorities say at least 9.1 million people across 41 provinces have been displaced, injured or otherwise affected by Typhoon Haiyan, one of the most powerful ever to hit land and experts say the deadliest natural disaster to strike the Philippines.

The government has deployed hundreds of soldiers in Tacloban, the remote eastern city worst hit by the storm. Sunday night people desperate for food, clean water and medicine looted a Red Cross convoy there. The government has also declared an official state of calamity, a measure that allows for the control of basic commodities and services to “avoid overpricing and hoarding of vital products.”

The Independent reported:

International relief workers are struggling to reach the hundreds of thousands left homeless, while witnesses on the ground say a coordinated centre for the effort is still yet to be established.

[President Benigno] Aquino said: “In the coming days, be assured: help will reach you faster and faster. My appeal to you all is: remaining calm, praying, cooperating with, and assisting one another are the things that will help us to rise from this calamity.”

US Marines were dispatched this morning to Tacloban. Flying in from Manila’s Vilamor air base, they were among the first contingents of the ballooning aid programme actually able to reach those in need.

The “super typhoon” washed away entire villages and is thought to have killed as many as 10,000 people. After flying over the island of Leyte—probably the worst affected place—in a helicopter, Interior Secretary Manuel Roxas said: “From the shore and moving a kilometre inland, there are no structures standing. I don’t know how to describe what I saw. … It’s horrific.” He added: “Imagine … all the shanties, everything, destroyed. They were just like matchsticks flung inland.”

Emergency teams have yet to reach coastal villages cut off by floods and landslides, where authorities predict higher death tolls.

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Mubarak set to be released once the emergency ends

By Ramadan Al Sherbini Correspondent

Hosni Mubarak, Image Credit: EPA

Cairo: Egypt’s former president Hosni Mubarak, who has been in detention for more than two years, could be released later this month, according to legal experts.
A court trying Mubarak, 85, on charges of complicity in killing hundreds of protesters during a 2011 uprising against his rule, is expected next week to decide on ending his house arrest.
In August, another court ordered Mubarak released after he had settled a corruption case, drawing protests from revolutionary groups.

Interim Prime Minister Hazem Al Beblawi used his power granted under a state of emergency and ordered Mubarak be put under house arrest at a military hospital in southern Cairo.
The emergency state, declared in mid-August following a deadly security crackdown on protesters backing Mubarak’s Islamist successor Mohammad Mursi, is set to expire on Thursday.
Al Beblawi has recently been quoted as saying that Mubarak will be transferred to temporary detention after his house arrest ends.

“What Al Beblawi said is an unacceptable interference in the judiciary’s powers,” said Farid Al Deeb, Mubarak’s defence lawyer.

“His statements implied an attempt to influence the court’s decision on Mubarak. This is unbecoming for a senior state official like Al Beblawi. Whether Mubarak will be jailed or not is up to the court to decide.”

Al Beblawi later said he was misquoted on Mubarak, signalling no plan on his military-backed government’s side to block Mubarak’s release.

“Mubarak is set to be released once the emergency of state ends,” said Hussain Ebrahim, a legal expert. “To send him back to prison, new evidence should be offered to the court, which has the authority to decide on the matter.”

Hussain added that a recently amended legislation, removing cap on temporary detention, cannot be applied retroactively to Mubarak.

Mubarak’s family has prepared for a reunion with him at a villa in the Red Sea resort town of Sharm Al Shaikh, according to local media reports.

His two sons, Alaa and Jamal, are being tried on charges of wasting public money and stock market manipulation.

In June last year, a court sentenced Mubarak to life in prison after finding him guilty of failing to prevent the killing of more than 800 protesters in the uprising that forced him out of power in February 2011.

However, the country’s top appeal court in January accepted Mubarak’s appeal and ordered his retrial, which began in May.

The retrial is due to resume on Saturday.

Gulf News

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By Abdulla Tarabishy, TMO

Egypt’s interim president Mansour (R) speaks with Palestinian President Abbas during a meeting in Cairoon 11/10/2013. REUTERS/Egyptian Handout.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, having occupied the front pages of Middle Eastern news for over 60 years, has been sidelined in the past several years (and particularly in the last few months) as Syria, Egypt, and Iran have made headlines. Yet even though the world media has largely ignored it, the conflict has raged on. The shooting of two Palestinians at an Israeli checkpoint last week is powerful proof of this.

As the conflict continues, so do the efforts to resolve it. Overshadowed by other events, a strong push has been made to restart negotiations between the two sides.  In fact, these other events have sometimes directly hindered the process.  During the crisis over Syrian chemical weapons in September, meetings between leaders that had been scheduled months in advance to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian issue were instead used to discuss the Syrian issue, pushing the peace process back yet again.

It is understandable that under the imminent threat of military action, negotiations over a 60 year old conflict were not the priority, both for the media, and for politicians.  However, the negotiations might have actually benefited from the lack of media coverage.

Previously, the peace process came with Israelis and Palestinians expecting from their leaders far more than either side could deliver.  Palestinians expect that their leaders will secure for them a state in the West Bank and Gaza with East Jerusalem as its capital.  Meanwhile, Israelis expect that the West Bank settlements will be allowed to remain, building allowed to continue unabated.  These expectations are not only incompatible, they are unrealistic.  However, with the media’s attention focused elsewhere, the leaders have a chance to enter into negotiations without the usual heavy expectations.

We should not be pessimistic in these efforts, as there is already enough pessimism; belief that this process will not succeed.  After so many negotiations which have ended only in disappointment, very few are optimistic that these negotiations will be any different.  But many politicians retain that optimism.  As each American leader has entered the presidency or the state department, he has brought with him his ambitions; the belief that he will succeed where others have failed.

Secretary of State John Kerry is no different.  Throughout his long career in the senate, Kerry has observed the successes and failures of the peace process.  He, like so many others before him, believes that he can resolve this conflict that has vexed the world for over half a century, and as the main force behind these negotiations, he will try his hand at it.

Regardless of other events around the world, resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict remains crucial to world stability.  With much of the Middle East in turmoil, it is more imperative than ever before that the oldest conflict of the region be solved.

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RIYADH (Reuters) – A few women filmed themselves driving in Saudi cities on Saturday, defying government warnings of arrest and prosecution to take part in a campaign against men-only road rules, activists said.

But some others stayed at home, put off by phone calls from men who said they were from the Interior Ministry, reported organizers of the demonstration against an effective ban on women drivers.
Police put up checkpoints in some parts of Riyadh, Reuters witnesses said, and there appeared to be more traffic patrols than usual on the streets of the capital – the latest sign of the sensitivity of the issue in the ultra-conservative Islamic kingdom.

“I know of several women who drove earlier today. We will post videos (online) later,” one of the campaign organizers told Reuters by phone.

Five videos were published on the campaign’s YouTube feed and Twitter on Saturday morning, dated October 26 and purporting to show women driving in Riyadh, the oasis region of al-Ahsa and the city of Jeddah.

It was not possible to verify when they were filmed.

King Abdullah has pushed some cautious reforms, expanding female education and employment. But he has also been careful not to open big rifts with conservative clerics.
Mosques across Saudi Arabia broadcast sermons on Friday telling women to stay at home.

Protests are illegal in Saudi Arabia, and public demands for political or social change have traditionally been interpreted by the authorities as an unacceptable challenge to the ruling al-Saud family’s authority, local analysts say.

However, organizers said their call for women to drive on Saturday was not a political protest as they had not called for gatherings, rallies or processions of cars.

Instead they have asked women with foreign driving licenses to get behind the wheel accompanied by a male relative and drive themselves when performing everyday tasks.

WEBSITE HACKED

A website set up by the campaigners to petition the government appeared to have been hacked on Saturday morning, displaying a black background illuminated by glowing red lightning bolts and bearing the message “Reason for the hacking: I am against women driving in the land of the two holy shrines”.

The kingdom’s powerful religious establishment is lavishly financed by the state, but it has opposed numerous government efforts to gradually increase women’s public role in society.

On Tuesday, around 150 conservative clerics gathered outside the royal court in a rare protest against the pace of social reforms in Saudi Arabia, including women’s rights. One prominent cleric, Sheikh Nasser al-Omar, was filmed describing the campaign for women to drive as “a conspiracy”.

However, supporters of the campaign can point to increasingly public support for the idea of women driving in the media and among prominent Saudi figures.

This month three women in the Shoura Council, an appointed quasi-parliament set up by King Abdullah to advise the government on policy, said the Transport Ministry should look into allowing women to drive.

They argued that the ban made it hard for women to work or look after their families and that it caused financial hardship for families who had to employ a full-time driver.

Some Saudi newspapers have also published editorials arguing women should be allowed to drive.

(Reporting by Angus McDowall; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

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