The judge said she had "absorbed" jihadi material from the Internet, adding: "You said you ruined the rest of your life. You said it was worth it. You said you wanted to be a martyr."
A group of men in the court's public gallery began shouting "Allahu akhbar" ("God is greater"), "British go to hell" and "Curse the judge" after the sentencing.
The life of 43 year old Sakineh Ashtiani, the Iranian woman accused of adultery as well as the murder of her husband, still hangs in the balance as Iranian officials and human rights agencies continue to haggle over her fate.
As if the woman hasn’t already endured a brutal and humiliating punishment for crimes she may not have committed, she now faces the real threat of execution by an angry band of mullahs bent on turning their wrath on helpless women.
Sakineh Ashtiani’s case is only a symptom of pervasive misogyny and systemic human rights violations in the country. And ironically, it is Iran and Saudi Arabia who have been nominated to sit on the ten member UN women’s rights board to be elected in November.
Adultery in these countries exists as a crime where women invariably end up as the sole convicts. Consequently, they are publicly shamed and often executed before irate mobs. Moreover, the gross injustice of these unfortunate occurrences is lost on the spectators who aid and abet such heinous crimes. Thirteen year old Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow...More >>
As the Taliban now run shadow governments in all but one of Afghanistan’s provinces (the Panjshir) amounting to a government-in-waiting, and one by one NATO governments announce their withdrawal dates, there is a glum resolve here among many aid workers that one day very soon the government we may be dealing with in Kabul will be a Taliban one. And so some are starting to seek engagement with the Taliban now, hoping they might be more accommodating than the miserable years of 1996-2001, when the overwhelming majority of organizations fled, and those who stayed, worked within bizarre and frustrating restrictions, many of which barred aid to women and girls. Overall, the restrictions and the fickle and unpredictable behaviour of the host government then meant aid simply could not reach all of the most vulnerable, and many lives were lost as a result.
With the possibility that the Taliban will return to power in whole or in part, humanitarian and social justice organizations are being counseled in some cases to be “neutral” towards the Taliban.
The thugs who run Iran watched patiently as the news cycle passed. When they thought the coast was clear, they declared again their intent to carry out capital punishment against a woman based on the oppressive laws of Shariah. But the world had not forgotten the tragic case of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani and the regime backed down, citing the "insolence" of the West.
The first comes from the Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Manouchehr Mottaki, telling his French counterpart Bernard Kouchner that "the authorities of justice had not pronounced the final verdict in the affair concerning Sakineh Ashtiani" -- a discreet, to say the least, way of making one (temporarily) forget the letter addressed by the Supreme Court of Tehran to the application of sentences office of Tabriz prison instructing that the young woman be executed as rapidly as possible.
And the second, from M. Mehmanparast, spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, reported by the Isna press agency, regrets that the Westerners have the "insolence" to transform "the case of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, who has committed crimes and
The Propagandist has previously reported on the vicious Iranian regime's intent to stone a woman to death. The following excerpt about the urgent danger to Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani is from the International Committee Against Stoning.
According to news received by the International Committee against Stoning and International Committee against Execution on 1 November 2010, the authorities in Tehran have given the go ahead to Tabriz prison for the execution of Iran stoning case Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani. It has been reported that she is to be executed this Wednesday 3 November.
We had previously reported that the casefile regarding the murder case of Ms Ashtiani’s husband had been seized from her lawyer’s office, Houtan Kian, and found missing from the prosecutor’s Oskoo branch office so as to stitch Ms Ashtiani up with trumped up murder charges. Ms Ashtiani’s son, Sajjad Ghaderzadeh, and her lawyer, Houtan Kian, have warned of the regime’s plan to do so on many occasions. With the arrest of Ms Ashtiani’s son and lawyer on 10 October and her not having had any visitation rights since...More >>
It seems the bizarre spectacle of Adbusters' Warsaw Ghetto-Gaza photo essay comparison isn't over yet. We received the following email late last night from the Editor of Adbusters (which was also sent to a number of other public commentators):
Here's something for all you people who cannot see the striking similarities between two atrocities:
Lasn is unrepentant. Indeed, he only digs herself in deeper with his weird rationalizations. Here's one nub of his criticism:
Last week, in a move to silence criticism of Israeli policies, the Canadian Jewish Congress labelled Adbusters -- and anyone who makes the above historical analogy -- anti-Semitic. The CJC has lobbied Shoppers Drug Mart not to carry Adbusters. Three-thousand-five-hundred copies of Adbusters will no longer be sold at Shoppers Drug Mart's 515 Canadian stores.
Totally bogus.
First of all, the CJC was not merely making a statement of its own opinion (which is still allowed, isn't it?), but passing along the judgement of the...More >>
Here in Kabul, there is a lot of talk about negotiations with the Taliban, as the new Peace Council has been formed. Most of what I hear from Afghans is sharp criticism over who sits on the Peace Council, including of the nine women who were appointed. Their ability to protect women's hard-fought for rights has been questioned by women leaders. Many people question the legitimacy of the process, and particularly, the credibility of those who have been appointed. The exact method of negotiations is unclear, and there is anxiety over a presumed lack of transparency.
The progressive member of parliament for Badakhshan, in north eastern Afghanistan, Fawzia Koofi, shares some of her reflections on talking to the Taliban, in the article below. She asks whether Karzai's government has the right to forgive the Taliban for their crimes, without the agreement of their victims: a very fair question, and one which nobody in the Afghan Government has yet bothered to answer.
Lauryn Oates is a Contributing Writer for The Propagandist.
As noted in an earlier article, the prosecution of Dutch politician Geert Wilders for group insult and incitement of hatred and discrimination went off the rails earlier this month. Not only did the Dutch Public Prosecutor advise that all charges against Wilders be dropped, but the judges handling his case were all dismissed after one of them – Tom Schalken - attended the same dinner party as a trial witness and apparently attempted to engage him in a conversation about the trial – a big potential for conflict of interest. Schalken is now facing proceedings launched by Wilders for influencing a witness.
The trial is expected to start over from scratch, but in the interim there has been some rather interesting fall-out in The Netherlands.
First, it looks like Geert Wilders is trying to limit the reach of Holland's law against group insult. As Radio Netherlands Worldwide reports:
“VVD leader Mark Rutte, the current PM, and Mr Wilders wanted to give politicians immunity for insulting remarks made as part of the national debate.
Christopher Hitchens has made a short list of things he'd like to see before cancer or some other unforeseen malady dictates the final chapter of his life. The list gets The Propagandist seal of approval:
Hitchens says that as he thinks about the rest of his life, he thinks about the books he'd still like to write, time with his three children — and how he should spend it. And he thinks of the obituaries he'd like to write, listing Robert Mugabe. Joseph Ratzinger. Henry Kissinger.
"It does gash me to think that people like that would outlive me, I have to say," he says. "It really does."
And he mentions other things he'd like to live to see: the end of the Kim Jong Il regime in North Korea, Osama bin Laden on trial, the World Trade Center rebuilt. Hitchens measures his own time, against the world.
The life of 43 year old Sakineh Ashtiani, the Iranian woman accused of adultery as well as the murder of her husband, still hangs in the balance as Iranian officials and human rights agencies continue to haggle over her fate.
As the Taliban now run shadow governments in all but one of Afghanistan’s provinces (the Panjshir) amounting to a government-in-waiting, and one by one NATO governments announce their withdrawal dates, there is a glum resolve here among many aid workers that one day very soon the government we may be dealing with in Kabul will be a Taliban one. And so some are starting to seek engagement with the Taliban now, hoping they might be more accommodating than the miserable years of 1996-2001, when the overwhelming majority of organizations fled, and those who stayed, worked within bizarre and frustrating restrictions, many of which barred aid to women and girls. Overall, the restrictions and the fickle and unpredictable behaviour of the host government then meant aid simply could not reach all of the most vulnerable, and many lives were lost as a result.
The Propagandist has previously reported on the vicious Iranian regime's intent to stone a woman to death. The following excerpt about the urgent danger to Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani is from the 
It seems the bizarre spectacle of 
As noted in an earlier article, the prosecution of Dutch politician Geert Wilders for group insult and incitement of hatred and discrimination 
