http://www.canada.com/components/print.aspx?id=11fbf4a8-282a-4d18-954f-546709b1240f&k=32073

Quote :

"Iran eyes badges for Jews Law would require non-Muslim insignia Chris Wattie National Post Friday, May 19, 2006 Human rights groups are raising alarms over a new law passed by the Iranian parliament that would require the country's Jews and Christians to wear coloured badges to identify them and other religious minorities as non-Muslims. "This is reminiscent of the Holocaust," said Rabbi Marvin Hier, the dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. "Iran is moving closer and closer to the ideology of the Nazis." Iranian expatriates living in Canada yesterday confirmed reports that the Iranian parliament, called the Islamic Majlis, passed a law this week setting a dress code for all Iranians, requiring them to wear almost identical "standard Islamic garments." The law, which must still be approved by Iran's "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenehi before being put into effect, also establishes special insignia to be worn by non-Muslims. Iran's roughly 25,000 Jews would have to sew a yellow strip of cloth on the front of their clothes, while Christians would wear red badges and Zoroastrians would be forced to wear blue cloth. "There's no reason to believe they won't pass this," said Rabbi Hier. "It will certainly pass unless there's some sort of international outcry over this." Bernie Farber, the chief executive of the Canadian Jewish Congress, said he was "stunned" by the measure. "We thought this had gone the way of the dodo bird, but clearly in Iran everything old and bad is new again," he said. "It's state-sponsored religious discrimination." Ali Behroozian, an Iranian exile living in Toronto, said the law could come into force as early as next year. It would make religious minorities immediately identifiable and allow Muslims to avoid contact with non-Muslims. Mr. Behroozian said it will make life even more difficult for Iran's small pockets of Jewish, Christian and other religious minorities -- the country is overwhelmingly Shi'ite Muslim. "They have all been persecuted for a while, but these new dress rules are going to make things worse for them," he said. The new law was drafted two years ago, but was stuck in the Iranian parliament until recently when it was revived at the behest of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. A spokesman for the Iranian Embassy in Ottawa refused to comment on the measures. "This is nothing to do with anything here," said a press secretary who identified himself as Mr. Gharmani. "We are not here to answer such questions." The Simon Wiesenthal Centre has written to Kofi Annan, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, protesting the Iranian law and calling on the international community to bring pressure on Iran to drop the measure. "The world should not ignore this," said Rabbi Hier. "The world ignored Hitler for many years -- he was dismissed as a demagogue, they said he'd never come to power -- and we were all wrong." Mr. Farber said Canada and other nations should take action to isolate Mr. Ahmadinejad in light of the new law, which he called "chilling," and his previous string of anti-Semitic statements. "There are some very frightening parallels here," he said. "It's time to start considering how we're going to deal with this person." Mr. Ahmadinejad has repeatedly described the Holocaust as a myth and earlier this year announced Iran would host a conference to re-examine the history of the Nazis' "Final Solution." He has caused international outrage by publicly calling for Israel to be "wiped off the map." Iran does not yet have nuclear weapons, but Tehran believed by Western nations to be developing its own nuclear military capability, in defiance of international protocols and peace treaties. The United States, France and Israel accuse Iran of using a civilian nuclear program to secretly build a weapon. Iran denies this, saying its program is confined to generating electricity."

[Edited on May 19, 2006 at 9:25 AM. Reason : b]

5/19/2006 9:23:46 AM

ahhahahahahahah

"flair"

5/19/2006 9:25:21 AM

America is whats wrong with the world today, no doubt.

5/19/2006 9:28:34 AM

5/19/2006 9:40:33 AM

And Iran goes even further down the drain...

5/19/2006 9:41:52 AM

Coming to theaters May 2048:

5/19/2006 9:56:41 AM

I'm guessing Hindus and Buddhists would get an orange hat?

5/19/2006 10:19:55 AM

i'm being serious here:

is there a big hindu population in Iran?

5/19/2006 10:48:07 AM

and yet many muslims deny the existence of the Holocaust...then they go do this?

They really don't do much to help their place in the world and gain allies.

5/19/2006 10:48:17 AM

i don't think so...although Indians are like the hi-tech Mexicans of the world. they'll show up wherever there's work

5/19/2006 10:52:24 AM

this has to be a joke

5/19/2006 10:53:51 AM

well the story was picked up in a couple places
http://news.google.com/news?q=iran%20badges%20jews

but some stories are saying it was false already
http://www.940news.com/locale.php?news=2512

5/19/2006 11:20:47 AM

HI-TECH-ICANS

5/19/2006 11:21:57 AM

HITLER DID IT

5/19/2006 11:40:27 AM

HI-TECHS-ICANS

5/19/2006 11:54:57 AM

^yeah thats what i was going for

5/19/2006 12:15:21 PM

set em up.

5/19/2006 12:17:53 PM

it is the main headline on drudge

BUT YOU KNOW THAT MEANS SO MUCH





Developing...

5/19/2006 12:25:47 PM

thread is useless without siren

5/19/2006 12:28:34 PM

5/19/2006 12:28:39 PM

Haha, I want to know if this is true or not.

It would basically label this dude (Ahmadinejad) as some sort of neo-Hitler.

And then we would have a reason for another fun 30's style military buildup.

5/19/2006 2:03:59 PM

I'm not in favor of getting rid of the Jews, but a tiny part of me thinks that getting rid of anyone stupid enough to be Jewish in modern Iran would probably benefit the gene pool through their removal.

That said, if this is true, I will actually start favoring an immediate war with Iran. Scratch that. Not just a war. The utter, complete vivisection of Iran.

5/19/2006 11:10:24 PM

link says:

Quote :

"This story is no longer available "

i call BS

5/20/2006 12:27:41 AM

it is bullshit.

apparently some iranian exiles in canada got the false story printed as news.

now a bunch of politicians and world leaders have denounced Iran very strongly, and theyre going to have to deal with the fact that the whole issue was a complete fabrication.

5/20/2006 3:22:37 AM

Quote :

" but a tiny part of me thinks that getting rid of anyone stupid enough to be Jewish in modern Iran would probably benefit the gene pool through their removal"

man, sometimes you only have to open your mouth and stupid just rolls right out.

5/20/2006 3:26:43 AM

It was an exagerration, obviously, but it highlighted my point: Why the hell would you stay in Iran if you were a Jew? I understand that picking up and moving isn't the easiest thing in the world, but how many times do you have to get massacred before you learn to read the writing on the walls?

5/20/2006 3:34:58 AM

It's the principle of the matter...

They shouldn't be forced to move out of somewhere because of someone else's idiotic beliefs. They probably live there, assuming the risks, hoping that things will change one day (maybe being the agents of that change) in hope their descendants can live in peace in the place their ancestors were once persecuted.

Giving up is worse (most of the time...) than trying and failing.

5/20/2006 3:38:07 AM

i dont get why a jew would want to live in iran anyway

5/20/2006 3:42:40 AM

There's a lot to be said for principle. There's a lot to be said for being alive to have principles, too. Obviously, there's a balance to be struck, but at the end of the day, sitting around to get killed because you shouldn't get killed is on the wrong fucking side of that balance.

There are, what, 25,000 Jews in Iran, out of 70,000,000 people under the control of a government that straight up hates Israel? This ain't the stuff the civil rights movement was made of. It ain't like they're going to do some sit-ins and boycotts and get things fixed. It ain't even like they could lead a successful violent counter to the government. They won't be agents to any change. There is no hope for that. Right now they are putting their descendants at unecessary and great risk, pure and simple.

5/20/2006 3:43:06 AM

it's just not that black and white.

its not a matter of saying "goddamn i'm sick of all these backwoods bornagain biblethumping retards, i think i'll move to Seattle".

people in non-western nations don't just have the ability to pick up and move whereever the fuck they want to.

5/20/2006 3:50:54 AM

Quote :

"people in non-western nations don't just have the ability to pick up and move whereever the fuck they want to."

That explains some of it, but I'll wager not most. I'll wager that many of these Jews could get out. I'll wager that a little bit of complaining about how terrible the Iranians are could get international help to get them out.

If I'm wrong, I'll shut up. But Iran's a big country with several porous borders, and at the very least, Israel won't turn them away.

5/20/2006 3:54:07 AM

how about:

"my family has lived here for 12 generations. now you want me to leave my city and country and schlepp my belongings down the road like some common refugee? for what, this schmuck? Oy Vey!"

[/billy crystal voice]

5/20/2006 3:58:11 AM

Who's the schmuck? Me? I don't think so. I don't want them to move on my account. But they might consider getting out of there for their kids' sakes, to say nothing of their own.

5/20/2006 3:59:53 AM

the schmuck would be Ahmadi Nejad, iranian president.

LOOK...

I dont know how to explain this to you, other than the world is not in black and white.

when you live somewhere adn someone doesnt like you and may kill you because of your family history, you dont necessarily have the option of just moving. to stay and protect generations of family heritage and property does not make you "stupid" and it doesnt give someone the right to exterminate you just to help your kinsmen's "gene pool".

Did you ever take western Civ?

the jews have been in Iran since 530 BCE. when the Persian king Cyrus the Great defeated Bablyon. Babylon had been forcing the exile of Jews from their homeland since the first jewish war of 586-587 BCE. This Persian king, Cyrus, was largely regarded as a messianic figure by the Jews ever since. A major Jewish holiday, "Purim", recounts the Jews' time in Persia and how they were as a people saved from extermination.

oh, yeah. Persia is the pre-Islam name of Iran. FYI.

do you get it now? The Jews have been in Iran since before it was Iran.

so i mean, really, i know you're trying to be faecetious and all, but joking about how stupid jews in Iran should leave after 2500 years, and those who dont could be killed to help improve the gene pool, indicates that at best youre ignorant of basic human history and ethics, at worse a racist who hides behind a facade of social darwinism.





[Edited on May 20, 2006 at 4:39 AM. Reason : plural possessive]

5/20/2006 4:17:01 AM

Quote :

"That said, if this is true, I will actually start favoring an immediate war with Iran. Scratch that. Not just a war. The utter, complete vivisection of Iran."

^

He is a murderous-minded racist.

1 - Not to compare one evil with another, but having to put yellow badges is infinitely less harmful/egregious than having ones house/farm/olive trees demolished and uprooted.

2 - And EVEN if it is true, you prove yourself to be MUCH MUCH worse than the engineers of the yellow badges. They put yellow badges on people, but you want them and their children and women dead and their country razed to the ground.

Is this the humane democratic Bush doctrine?

Even Bush and his cronies are not that evil.

I guess you will post saying it was an exaggeration and a joke, right?

5/20/2006 8:00:08 AM

To be fair, waging war against Iran doesn't require the killing of all its women and children and razing everything to the ground. Even in Iraq where everything conceivable has gone wrong suffered a minimal loss of women and children and very little of the country was razed to the ground. A lot of the damage done was done by the insurgents (power plants, water distribution centers, oil infrastructure, the local market, the local police station, etc).

That said, offering political asylum to all jews/christians in Iran would be a far cheaper policy and far more likely to have favorable outcomes. Any Iranian that turns up at the American Embassy and can demonstrate being a Christian or Jew gets a free visa to the U.S., air-fare to be paid by the refugee.

5/20/2006 9:50:44 AM

Quote :

"Even in Iraq where everything conceivable has gone wrong suffered a minimal loss of women and children"

o really... lets explore that shall we?

40,000 confirmed* iraqi civilian deaths with 20% being women and children.

*confirmed by at least 2 independent, accredited sources, therefore most probably there are many more unconfirmed
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

so at least 8,000 dead women and children.

and with 2,400 dead US military, that's only slightly better than a 3:1 kill ratio against women and children.

so, yeah i guess youre right. 8,000 dead women and children is pretty minimal.




[Edited on May 20, 2006 at 5:04 PM. Reason : ]

5/20/2006 5:02:26 PM

maybe iraq was like the regame warmup for a war with iran

now that we know what we shoulda done different we can fuck iran up even better

5/21/2006 12:19:13 AM

^^ Yea, war is kinda like that. Compare that 8,000 to the number killed in Vietnam, the number killed in Somalia, etc. etc. Besides, what percentage of that 8,000 were killed by insergents?

Either way, 8,000 is about 0.05% of the female population of Iraq (ignoring children). Since when does 0.05% constitute "all"?

Something tells me the number of women in Iraq that have died of natural causes dramatically swamps this 8,000.

Not that this is justification for the war, that could never be done. What it is justification for is the use of the word "minimal."

[Edited on May 21, 2006 at 9:20 AM. Reason : .,.]

5/21/2006 9:18:31 AM

Quote :

"Persia is the pre-Islam name of Iran."

Don't get condescending with me. I may not know a lot of things, but I've got a pretty solid grasp on history.

Quote :

"The Jews have been in Iran since before it was Iran."

Yes, I gather that. Pretty much any group of people that lives in Iran would have lived there before it became Iran. And at the same time, I understand that there is a lot to be said for one's connection to one's homeland, and for family heritage, and for all that. But dying for it is counterproductive. Making other people (your family) die for it is borderline wrong. At least if you're alive you can pass on your family traditions and a knowledge of where you came from. Dead, you've got nothing but your pride.

Quote :

"i know you're trying to be faecetious and all, but joking..."

...is just joking. Far worse comments get made in this forum on a practically hourly basis. If you're that thin-skinned, you probably need to move on.

Quote :

"I guess you will post saying it was an exaggeration and a joke, right?"

No, it wasn't.

You don't seem to understand what upsets me. The yellow badges in and of themselves would barely attract my attention. As you say, plenty of worse things are done to Palestinians and others. My concern would lie in the future, in the inevitable next step. Call "slippery slope" all you want, but we've only got a couple of other examples in history to look at, and both times these markings were immediate predecessors to far worse crimes.

Besides, the Iranians are not stupid. They know a little history here and there. If they were to actually have done this, they would be sending a clear signal about their intent.

Quote :

"8,000 dead women and children is pretty minimal."

Given the nature of the conflict (urban fighting, etc), yeah, it really is.

5/21/2006 1:43:39 PM

Quote :

" GrumpyGOP: just joking. "

so, Grumps, you're saying that your earlier comment that: "getting rid of anyone stupid enough to be Jewish in modern Iran would probably benefit the gene pool through their removal" was just a joke. but what part of it were you just kidding about?

was the basic suggestion of getting rid of the Jews a joke? or that the Jews are stupid is that the joke. or that if the Jews were gotten rid of, their gene pool would benefit.. maybe that was the joke?

no, im not thin skinned. I truly like jokes. And I want you to help me understand it, so i can tell it at parties.

...

Really, you sound like the stereotypical "stupid american". you know, not everyone in the world has the luxuries americans do about packing up and moving across the country, or to another country.

sorry, but its not a simple matter to just pick up your shaving kit, leave your family and friends, wealth and property, house and livelihood, where your family has been for hundreds of years, and flee your country to basically become a refugee somewhere.

and even if you could, how do you then look yourself in the mirror, face your wife and children, and the new strangers around you and basically say: "I gave up. I ran away. I'm too scared." Talk about spending the rest of your life feeling like a piece of shit.

Man, do you have any concept of pride? self-worth?










...and the news article in question is bogus.







[Edited on May 22, 2006 at 12:32 AM. Reason : ]

5/22/2006 12:25:29 AM

Quote :

"the jews have been in Iran since 530 BCE. when the Persian king Cyrus the Great defeated Bablyon. Babylon had been forcing the exile of Jews from their homeland since the first jewish war of 586-587 BCE. This Persian king, Cyrus, was largely regarded as a messianic figure by the Jews ever since. A major Jewish holiday, "Purim", recounts the Jews' time in Persia and how they were as a people saved from extermination. oh, yeah. Persia is the pre-Islam name of Iran. FYI. do you get it now? The Jews have been in Iran since before it was Iran. so i mean, really, i know you're trying to be faecetious and all, but joking about how stupid jews in Iran should leave after 2500 years, and those who dont could be killed to help improve the gene pool, indicates that at best youre ignorant of basic human history and ethics, at worse a racist who hides behind a facade of social darwinism. "

Quote :

"its not a matter of saying "goddamn i'm sick of all these backwoods bornagain biblethumping retards, i think i'll move to Seattle". people in non-western nations don't just have the ability to pick up and move whereever the fuck they want to. "

You act like Jews constitute a significant portion of the population of Iran. Since the formation of Israel, the number of Iranian Jews has dropped from over 150,000 to less than 25,000. The Iranian revolution has accelerated this population decline. You know why? Because most Jews picked up and left instead of facing state sanctioned discrimination. The way the country is headed with it's harsh anti-Israel rhetoric, it won't be long before the rest leave.

You come off as a pompous prick whenever you post. Stop acting like you know everything.

[Edited on May 22, 2006 at 1:50 AM. Reason : 2]

5/22/2006 1:38:40 AM

Quote :

"but what part of it were you just kidding about?"

I was joking that killing stupid people would benefit the human race first off, and about the Jews in question being stupid (in a basic sense) secondly.

Quote :

"sorry, but its not a simple matter to just pick up your shaving kit, leave your family and friends, wealth and property, house and livelihood, where your family has been for hundreds of years, and flee your country to basically become a refugee somewhere."

No, it's not simple, but it has been done, by countless millions of people of all types before these Iranian Jews, and by people of greater poverty, and by people with all sorts of other mitigating factors as well. Other Jews -- many Iranian Jews -- have pulled up stakes and left their homes before. Almost everyone in America has ancestors who did it, sometimes from persecution, sometimes for less motivations. I'm not suggesting that it's as easy as going on vacation. I'm not suggesting that it's as "easy" as anything except, well, fleeing your homeland and becoming a refugee.

And the Jews are a special case. They may have ties to their place in Iran, sure, but as Jews they also have strong -- quite possibly stronger -- ties to Israel, to the Holy Land. They have a place they can go where they would fit in reasonably well. Plenty of people have packed up to avoid slaughter without that advantage.

Again, it would be difficult, and for many it would likely be fatal. At least in leaving they would have a fighting chance as opposed to none at all.

Quote :

"Talk about spending the rest of your life feeling like a piece of shit."

Yes, I'm sure that every Jew that got out of Nazi Europe felt like a real coward. Ditto all the slaves who made it up north. Ditto the ancestors of most of the United States. Those bastards, I really think less of them.

Courage has its place, but that place should not be causing people to stay and die when their death can bring about no good whatsoever. We've already established that the Jews of Iran are far too small, far too disliked a group to bring about any change. And, were this report accurate, the only thing left for them other than flight would be an ignominous death resulting in nothing.

On the other hand, if they escape as refugees, they can serve as a vocal condemnation of Iran, and agitate against it, and maybe, depending on circumstances, later play an active part in helping things.

The long and the short of it: Fleeing to save yourself and your family from certain death without harming others simply is not cowardice.

Quote :

"Man, do you have any concept of pride? self-worth?"

It is precisely because I feel I am worth something that I will not throw myself away for nothing. If the greater good can profit from my death, I will, I believe, offer it, though until the fateful moment comes nobody can really say.

Especially in the case of many Iranian Jews with families in their care, anyone who would let their pride put all of their loved ones at risk of suffering and death is quite probably a bastard.

[Edited on May 22, 2006 at 4:21 AM. Reason : ]

5/22/2006 4:20:42 AM

Quote :

"Yes, I'm sure that every Jew that got out of Nazi Europe felt like a real coward. Ditto all the slaves who made it up north."

5/23/2006 12:58:11 PM

To do:

Afghanistan
Iraq
Iran

[Edited on May 23, 2006 at 1:15 PM. Reason : ]

5/23/2006 1:06:36 PM