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POPSGays Exist Quietly, In Iran "Shahin, 27, a chemist, has kept his gay life secret from his parents. “I don’t want to upset them,” he said. “Maybe they will consider me sick and feel sorry for me.”
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POPSNo Homo's In Iran "In Iran we don't have homosexuals like you do in your country. In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon."
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POPSNo Gays in Iran… But Many Same-Sex Couples: US Professor
William O.Beeman is professor and chair of the department of anthropology at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. He has been conducting research in Iran for more than 30 years, and is a fluent speaker of Persian. "Active partners in Iran do not consider themselves to be “homosexual.” Indeed, it is a kind of macho boast in some circles that one has been an active partner with another male. Passive partners are denigrated and carry a life-long stigma if their sexual role is known, even after a single incident. They have been deflowered, as it were, in the same way that women might lose their virginity, and they are considered to be "xarob" or "destroyed." "In actual fact, many men are "versatile" in their sexual activity but if they are known to have relations with other men, they will always claim in public to be the active partner. Same-sex relations between females are undoubtedly practised, but this is the deepest secret in Iran, and rarely talked about at all."
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POPSUS No.1 BoogieMan? A bantam Cock? Worth WAR? "The right has decided it is at war with Iran, so a routine visit by Iran's ceremonial president to the UN GA has generated sparks. The foremost cheerleader for such a view in Congress is Sen Lieberman, who recently pressed Gen. Petraeus on the desirability of bombing Iran in order to forestall weapons smuggling into Iraq from that country. American hawks are beating the war drums loudly because they are increasingly frustrated with the course of events. They are unsatisfied with the lack of enthusiasm among the EU and UN for impeding Tehran's nuclear energy research program. While the Bush administration insists that the program aims at producing a bomb, the Iranian state maintains that it is for peaceful energy purposes. It wants tighter sanctions on Iran at the UN but is unlikely to get them in the short term because of Russian and Chinese reluctance. They may attempt to create a "coalition of the willing" of Iran boycotters outside the UN framework."
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POPSShabby, Cheap US Politician "Have Blood on their Hands" not Iran "The claims that Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust and has called for the destruction of Israel are false. He has called for regime change, which is something American politicians do every time they find a country whose policies they disagree with. Regime change is a change of government, not genocide. As for the Holocaust, he said it raised two questions: Why put people in prison who question details of the official version, which is what several European countries do. Why should the Palestinians be made to pay for it? Both are good questions. "How American politicians can call Iran a dangerous country and claim that it poses a threat to the U.S. is a mystery. On second thought, it is not a mystery. It just tells you that the politicians think you and I are so stupid that we will fall for the exact same parade of lies and exaggerations that was used to justify the war against Iraq. "Think for yourself. Iran has no nuclear weapons, and its military is designed for defence. It has
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POPSWe want More WAR, We want More WAR, NOW! A recent congressional resolution on Iran underscores the War Party's lock on the foreign policy 'debate'. Calling on the UN to bring charges of "genocide" against Iranian is yet another example of political pandering and congressional grandstanding that bears little, if any, relationship to reality.
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POPSIran declares US Army, CIA "terrorists" On Wednesday, the Senate voted 76-22 in favor of a resolution urging the State Department to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization. While the proposal attracted overwhelming bipartisan support, a small group of Democrats said they feared labeling the state-sponsored organization a terrorist group could be interpreted as a congressional authorization of military force in Iran.
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POPSFundamentalism & Government: There, but for the Grace of the Constitution, Go I
It's interesting how much agendas of Christian fundamentalists can overlap with other religious fundamentalists. Obviously, they will never be able to get a completely straight society. Laws and persecution don't make homosexuals go away. Is a society of convenient denial what these religions truly want? In that case they aren't saving souls, they are just insulating themselves from diversity. What is also quite interesting is that the article goes on to talk about Iran's encouragement of homosexuals to undergo sex changes. (Never mind that gender disphoria isn't necessarily linked with homosexuality...) I see in this the same agenda at work as when American Christians talk about "curing" homosexuality. But the BIG question is: if we let the Christian fundamentalists run the country like they want to, would they do things any differently than what we are seeing in Iran? I haven't seen anything to suggest they would.
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POPSConflict in Iran: Symbiosis between Bush and Ahmadinejad I've stitched together three very interesting articles over the last week, which become much more interesting when you read them in sequence. Look carefully at what is happening. If there is anything that lays bare the role of the Bush Administration's jingoistic belligerence in the Middle East, it is the recent conflict in the Strait of Hormuz. With the international pressure off Ahmadinejad, he starts taking heat in Iran for the shortcomings of his leadership. Without fear, his belligerent and isolationist politics lose their appeal. In order to defend his world view, and preserve the source of his power, he needs America as an enemy... So some Iranian boats play around with one of our convoys, Bush comes out with some insane saber-rattling press conference, and, Ahmadinejad is back in business, courtesy of the Bush administration. If you desire war, you need an enemy. If you need an enemy, you desire war. Bush needs Ahmadinejad. Just like Ahmadinejad needs Bush.
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POPSAhmadinejad's ally denounced for pro-Israel remarks "Not all the Israeli people are wearing (military) boots on the street." Ahmadinejad himself has earned international notoriety for his frequent verbal assaults against the Jewish state, which he has described as a "stinking corpse" and has predicted is doomed to disappear. Tehran vows never to recognise Israel, an ally of the pro-US shah who was ousted in the 1979 Islamic revolution, and Ahmadinejad has repeatedly said Iran is ready to talk to all nations except the "Zionist regime." "Mr Mashaie probably does not know that those he calls people (Israelis) are the same occupiers of houses of millions of Palestinians," the MPs said in the statement. "These people have created the illegitimate Zionist regime... we do not recognise a land called Israel let alone recognise its people."
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POPSWhen Not Seeing Is Believing Human perfection. Whether we like it or not. Justice, peace and virtue. That concept of the beneficent, omnipotent will of God and the need to always submit to it, whether we like it or not, is not new. It has been present in varying degrees throughout history in all three great monotheisms—Judaism, Christianity and Islam—from their very origins. And with it has come the utter certainty of those who say they have seen the face of God or have surrendered themselves to his power or have achieved the complete spiritual repose promised by the Books of all three faiths: the Torah, the Gospels, the Koran. That is where the smile comes from. (Andrew Sullivan. Time Magazine , Oct. 2, 2006.)
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POPS'Unavoidable' attack on Iran looms, says Israeli Minister. "I could not help myself. It is my nature." "Unavoidable" said the Zionists. Then the frog and the scorpion both sank into the muddy waters of the swiftly flowing river. Self destruction - "It's my Nature", said the Scorpion/Zionists, And just like in 1967 and at Pearl Harbour, the scorpion will strike first. "It's in my Nature" Then the 1967 oil crisis will have been a fireball compared to the glimmer we will have after the Zionist go nuclear. Like their glory in Samson, they'd finish us all off gladly to fulfil crazy predictions.
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