"Promoting Superstitions"

"Promoting Superstitions"

Cross posted from Great Satan's Girfriend
http://greatsatansgirlfriend.blogspot.com/

Iran's Culture Ministry on Sunday announced the closure of nine cinema and lifestyle magazines for publishing pictures and stories about the life of "corrupt" foreign film stars and promoting "superstitions."

The Press Supervisory Board, a body controlled by hard-liners, also sent warning notes to 13 other publications and magazines on "observing the provisions of the press law," the ministry said on its Web site.It was not clear why the nine magazines were targeted for closure. They do not deal with politics, focusing on light lifestyle features, family advice, and news of celebrities.They regularly publish photos of Iranian actresses in loose headscarves and stylish clothes, as well as foreign female film stars without head coverings — but nothing more revealing than what is tolerated on some state media.The ministry said it shut them down for "using photos of artists, especially foreign corrupt film stars, as instruments (to arouse desire), publishing details about their decadent private lives, propagating medicines without authorization, promoting superstitions."It did not elaborate. Such magazines often have small adds for vitamins and remedies, including pills to treat impotence.

Mohsen Ahmadi, editor of one of the closed magazines — Sobh-e-Zendegi, or Morning of Life — condemned the order."It is deplorable that a family lifestyle magazine is ordered closed. It means 70 people have lost their job," he told The Associated Press.Ahmadi said he received the closure order from the Culture Ministry on Sunday, but it was dated March 10. He said he suspected authorities waited to implement the order until after Friday's parliament elections to avoid raising anger.The other magazines closed down were Donya-e-Tasvir, Baznegari, Talash, Be Sooy-e-Eftekhar, Neday-e-Iran, Haft, Shooka and Havar.Iran saw a wave of newspaper closures amid a confrontation between reformers and hard-liners during the 1997-2005 tenure of former reformist President Mohammad Khatami.The judiciary has shut down more than 100 pro-reform newspapers and jailed dozens of editors and writers on vague charges of insulting authorities since 2000.

AP and Times Of India
art by Kathy Schicker

Posted by GrEaT sAtAn'S gIrLfRiEnD

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A note from Radarsite: One of the great lessons of history it seems is that evil is. That it actually does exist. Not merely as some hypothetical moral construct, nor like Beauty, does it exist only in the eyes of the beholder. It is not some ephemeral concept, subject to the vagaries of fashion or to societies ever-changing mores. It exists in its own inviolable form, eternal, complete, whole, unique and incontrovertible. It will not be diminished by rationalizations, nor altered by well-intentioned euphemisms. Impervious to rationality or explanation, it exists in this world just as surely as fire or water or air.

Islam, this so-called religion of peace, is not just different, it is evil, absolute evil. And absolute evil can neither be cajoled nor appeased, it must simply be eradicated or it will grow. Evil feeds upon complacency. It is nurtured by indifference. The purpose of evil is simply to devour the good and the just, the meek and the unsure. To infiltrate the unwary host and destroy it from within. And, unless challenged, unless destroyed, it will assuredly flourish and multiply.

Throughout the ages, perhaps the most effective form of evil has been evil disguised as the champion of good. Evil regaled in the shining armor of righteousness and purity. Evil posing as the champion of lost virtue. The champion of lost honor and pride. But the most dangerous evil of all is that evil-convinced-that-it-is-good, convinced that it knows the way, convinced that it alone holds the sacred light of truth firmly in its grasp. Convinced of its inherent goodness and its noble mission, it must no longer tolerate dissension. Dissenters or debaters are now to be perceived as dangerous heretics and treacherous saboteurs. Doubters become enemies. Questioners become enemies. Enemies of the good. Traitors to the mission.

The most dangerous threat to evil-convinced-that-it-is-good is freedom. Freedom of thought and freedom of doubt. Therefore, little by little, this insidious concept of freedom must be discredited and degraded, it must be equated with license and corruption, it must be restricted and contained by any and all means available, quarantined like some virulent plague, until such time as it can be completely and utterly eradicated.

How many times during those turbulent chapters of this poor world's history have we seen these same unchecked embers of evil grow into raging infernos that inevitably engulfed everything in its path? "First they burn the books," they say. "Then they burn the people".

We must awake from our lethargy, America. We must gird ourselves for battle. We must go out and kill the killers before the killers kill us, but yet at the same time we must somehow find a way to nurture the heroic dissenters and the brave doubters. We must give the heretics hope, hope and promise. We must use our God-given freedoms to find a way to give them their chance. We must act. We must have the courage to destroy the monster while we still have the strength to do it. Before he grows any more formidable.

But, in order to successfully confront the monster we must first of all believe that he exists. -rg