Dissident Watch: Mansour Osanlou


By Michael Rubin
Posted: Friday, November 17, 2006

ARTICLES
Middle East Quarterly
Publication Date: December 1, 2006

On December 22, 2005, several thousand Tehran bus drivers belonging to the Syndicate of Workers of the Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company (sharkat-e vahed) went out on strike paralyzing the capital. Their leader, Mansour Osanlou, called the job action to protest government refusal to discuss housing and education benefits, working conditions, and recognition of the union. [1] The strike was the first major independent strike in the Islamic Republic where, since the revolution, the government has served both as the largest employer and the regulator of organized labor representatives. [2]


Resident Scholar Michael Rubin

Iranian security forces responded by arresting Osanlou. They held him without charge, denied him access to a lawyer, and transferred him to Tehran’s Evin Prison. Learning of planned protests calling for his release, security forces rounded up the union’s board of directors and arrested several hundred workers. [3] The Tehran municipality seized control of the company [4] and dismissed many workers who refused to return to their jobs. [5]

Students and other labor activists sided with the bus drivers. On January 31, the student union at Tehran’s Amir Kabir University demanded the “unconditional release” of the arrested workers. [6] To the bemusement of ordinary citizens prevented from riding buses by the refusal of drivers to work, the official daily Kayhan denied that there had been a strike. [7]

The standoff continued for months as the bus drivers continued their protests. On May 1, 2006, several hundred police broke up a peaceful demonstration calling for Osanlou’s release and arrested several more students and union activists. [8] Ebrahim Yazdi, the Islamic Republic’s first foreign minister, took President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to task for his actions. “Mr. Ahmadinejad, you talk about poverty in America … but they do not imprison workers for going on strike to increase their wages,” he declared. “The Vahed bus company workers who strike to increase their wages, face a language of force.” [9]

The government crackdown continued into the summer. On July 15, 2006, the Labor Ministry invited six bus drivers and union representatives to negotiate a solution. When the six arrived at the ministry, security forces arrested them. [10] Finally, on August 9, 2006, the Iranian government released Osanlou. [11]

When Osanlou began organizing Tehran’s bus drivers, a pro-government vigilante group affiliated with the officially-sanctioned labor organization attacked him and, while holding him down, severed part of his tongue. [12] How ironic, then, that while Osanlou and his allies refused to be silenced, the White House failed to speak up.

Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at AEI.

Notes

1. Iranian Labor News Agency (ILNA, Tehran), Dec. 25, 2005.

2. Shargh (Tehran), Jan. 2, 2006.

3. "Iran: Release Workers Arrested for Strike,” Human Rights Watch, Jan. 31, 2006; letter from Ebrahim Madadi, vice president of the Syndicate of Workers of the Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company, to Juan Somavia, director general, International Labor Organization, May 30, 2006.

4. ILNA, Feb. 9, 2006.

5. National Review Online, June 19, 2006.

6. ILNA, Jan. 31, 2006.

7. Kayhan (Tehran), Jan. 29, 2006.

8. "Free Mansour Osanloo Now!,” International Alliance in Support of Workers in Iran, May 8, 2006.

9. ILNA, May 12, 2006.

10. E-mail from a Vahed Bus company representative, July 15, 2006.

11. ILNA, Aug. 10, 2006.

12. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, May 24, 2005.

Hypnotizing Yourself Positively
By Dr. Robert Schuller

"Call to Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know." --Jeremiah 33:3

Pathways to Jihadi Terrorism
Dr. Babu Suseelan
Jihadi terrorism is as old as Islam. Jihad war, death and destruction have followed in the wake of Islam for hundreds of years. Ancient Egypt, Greece, Spain, Persia, India and several societies have experienced the deadly Islamic conquest. Now Jihadi terrorism has propelled to dangerous proportions and is a major threat to public health and world peace. Jihadi terrorists are said to have the unique ability to perpetuate their deadly terrorism wreaking havoc in every city in the world. It's destructive impact on the economy, public health and public safety is widespread, and on the increase.

Sensational Jihadi terrorism, mass riots, violence, beheading, suicide bombing and plane hijacking are under constant media scrutiny. Jihadi terrorism is also a compelling subject for terrorism scholars, social scientists and security planners. Nevertheless, agreement on the important underlying causes has been elusive and inconsistent. Liberal left wing social scientists attribute Jihadi terrorism as a product of "labeling" and social causes including economic deprivation and interference of non-Islamic countries. They romanticize Jihadi terrorists as involved in protest against social injustice. In their eagerness to promote the irrational doctrine of "political correctness", left wing armchair peculators see Jihadi terrorists as victims of reactionary, reductionist "conspiracy theories" that make the terrorists the real victim of unjust society. For phony, left wing, liberal social scientists, suicide bombing, mass murder, riots, arson and public beheading of non-Muslims by Jihadi terrorists are negotiated product of formal responses to political injustices.
Numerous empirical evidence and case study analysis of Muslim terrorists proves the unbalance of this equation. Such malicious "politically correct" statement is misleading and mischievous. The unified left wing explanation of Jihadi terrorism as a social phenomenon in the changing political, economic context is false and falls far short of explaining reliable and stable psychological and religious variables influencing Islamic terrorism.

In recent years, studies of risk prediction and identification of both static and dynamic factors associated with Jihadi terrorism have provided a clear understanding of the problem. Empirically based investigations of psychological factors on Jihadi terrorists have indicated important cognitive and behavioral variables acting as pathways for Jihadi terrorism. Focused studies have revealed unusual ways of Jihadi's thinking, asocial attitudes, cruelty, and indifference to the feelings of victims, paranoia and aggressive hostility.

ISLAMIC THINKING ERRORS

Religious, psychological, educational, and historical factors are implicated in Jihadi terrorism. Static variables (age, ethnic, religious, background) and dynamic variables (cognitive distortions, thinking errors, negative emotions, maladaptive behaviors, deviance amplifying community networks) also specifically lend itself to the identification of dynamic risk factors of Jihadi terrorism. Muslims think Islam is a perfect and perfected religion. It has perfect answers for science, politics, government, economics, psychosocial problems and human life. As far as the doctrinal tenets are concerned, Islam maintains that Muslims must unquestionably follow the tenets. Muslims should shun everything that is opposed to Islam. Muslims consider Koran, Hadith and sura, which are called "Nusoos-e-Qatiyah", are perfect and have no place for criticism.

Muslims are indoctrinated at an early age into the rigid, closed, reductionist Islamic dogma, demanding full faith and devotion and separation from all competing philosophies. They are kept ignorant of the world and other rational thought systems. Islamic schools focus on rote memorization of Koran and discourage critical thinking. Islam regards thinking as a part of worship. Questioning Islamic concepts is the biggest crime, punishable by death.

From the beginning, Islamic education starts formulating a conceptualization, which logically connects automatic Islamic thoughts and beliefs. The education system fails to see the larger picture and jump from one core belief to another. It provides a cognitive map that is limited, hostile and untrue. The faulty cognitive map generally resonates with the students for life. These rigid Islamic cognitive schemas have a profound impact on their thinking, feeling and behavior. Muslims have a common narrative history, cognitive schemas, social scripts, and kind of desire, attitude and cultural values. The whole thought system lacks critical thinking, rational analysis and personal responsibility, and Muslims are just content to stay the same and blame every one but themselves for their thinking errors. For their failings and shortcomings, Muslims hide behind alibi and denial. Everything happens is "Allah's Will" and "non-believers will burn in Islamic hell fire". Such automatic expressions influence their subsequent emotion, behavior and response. Since their automatic response is based on their pre-conceived Islamic thought, they often misconstrue neutral situations to fit their closed model thinking. Thus, Muslim's automatic thoughts are with full of thinking errors and biased. Since Islam is a closed dogma and Muslims are forbidden to test its validity or utility, and required to maintain the equilibrium at any cost, Muslim's thinking errors are overwhelming. Dysfunctional automatic thoughts coexist with various thinking errors in Islam. Typical Islamic thinking errors include:
* Polarized or all-or-nothing-thinking (e.g.: believers and non-believers, daru-ul-Islam, dar-ul-harb)
* Catastrophic Thinking (all infidels will go to hell)
* Discounting the positive, accentuate the negative (all kafirs are trying to get Muslims)
* Emotional reasoning (emotional justification for bombing, beheading, terrorism)
* Labeling (put a global label on non-believers as kafirs)
* Minimization (blame the victim, denial, alibi)
* Mind Reading (Muslims know what non-Muslims are thinking)
* Mental Filter (Failure to see things wholistically)
* Over Generalization (making sweeping negative conclusions, Jews are pigs, Christians are rats)
* Personalization (Muslims believe Kafirs are behaving negatively because of Islam)
* Tunnel Vision (only see things the Islamic way)
Muslims erroneously think Islamic absolutist paradigm is designed to be adaptable to existing, new and future applications for all the time. It restricts Muslims to seek viable solutions to life's problems. They refuse to reform or incorporate critical elements with Islamic thinking as a means to achieve a better society by utilizing new concepts to reach a more accurate assessment to produce more accurate judgments. Out of box thinking, logical reasoning, higher order thinking, and scientific thinking are really not intellectual pursuits of Muslims.
DISTURBED JIHADI MIND
As a result, their interpretation of neutral events, problem solving strategies, emotional reactions, interpersonal communication and attitude towards non-Muslims are full of thinking errors, automatic thoughts and negative behaviors. Consciously or unconsciously, Jihadi Muslims react to upsetting events, rejection, failure, and criticism in extreme negative Islamic terms. They may spontaneously respond without critical evaluation with extreme, angry outbursts. Instead of developing a more adaptive response, Jihadi Muslims accept automatic, pre-cooked responses couched in Islamic jargon as correct and feel proud of it. Islamic automatic thoughts are predictable since its underlying beliefs are in the closed, rigid Islamic dogma. Such automatic response and ready-made solutions from Koranic concepts complicate issues, and interfere with their ability to reach positive goals. These dysfunctional, automatic thoughts and negative mal adaptive behaviors are logically connected to the content of the defective automatic thoughts. It leads to intermittent explosive disorder including violence, riots, suicide bombing and terrorism. For Jihadi Muslims, such distorted thoughts and violent behavior has their own validity and utility.

The consequences are decidedly disastrous and miserable for the victims. The interaction of Islamic dogmatism, early indoctrination, rote memorization, deviant amplifying community psychodynamics, and cognitive processes enable Muslims to the maintenance of closed thinking, negative emotions and explosive behaviors. Strict Islamic regulatory guidelines also act as catalysts for developing authoritarian/conservative personality traits including conservatism, aggression, toughness, projectivity, stereotyping, destruction, hostility and anger. Such aggressive, conservative personality traits are maintained in all Jihadi Muslims by militant Islamic religious and social networks. Research studies have revealed that individuals who are committed to dogmatic Islamic belief system suffer from reasoning deficiencies, thinking errors and are likely to join terrorists groups as an expression of their conservative/authoritarian outlook. There is also evidence that socioeconomic factors, and educational level are not a determinant of Jihadi terrorism. Do Jihadi Muslims who share dogmatic Islamic beliefs, and membership in terrorism groups are more emotionally disturbed? By every measure available to researchers, absolutist, dogmatic, rigid beliefs negatively influence ethical judgment, and precipitate emotional disturbances.

DEVIANCE AMPLIFYING ISLAMIC NETWORKS

In Islamic culture, the common emotional impulses of Muslims are shaped through Islamic education, and through shared experiences in the Islamic social groups. Islamic cultural institutions, religious organizations and the state have ways of controlling thinking and social expression.
The dogmatic Islamic ideology, and the strict enforcement of religious practices to maintain the closed system, and rote memorization of Koran solidify dysfunctional cognitive schemas. Defective cognitive schemas, culture and conservative personality continuously interact, in mutually supporting and shaping explosive behaviors.

Jihadi Muslims seldom recognize the existence or inappropriateness of their thinking errors, negative emotions or refrain from misinterpretation of the situation or violent outbursts. In discussion or negotiation sessions, Jihadis often mix-up feelings and thoughts and mislabel feelings as thoughts. The connection among their irrational thoughts, negative emotion and outrageous behavior is always justified in the name of Allah.

PREVENTING JIHADI VIOLENCE

To develop and implement an effective model to prevent Jihadi violence and terrorism, it is important to focus on the cognitive and behavioral variables acting as pathways for Jihadi terrorism. Empirically based investigations of psychological factors of Jihadi terrorism have been helpful in identifying risk factors, thinking errors, and criminogenic needs of Jihadi terrorists. These risk factors, and the deadly Islamic ideology, which transforms Muslims into terrorists and suicide bombers should be part of any effective harm reduction and terrorism prevention policy and plan. Prevention strategies must include effective cognitive restructuring methods to address the impact of early learning processes and its influence in shaping negative emotions and deviant behaviors. Democratic nations must exert pressure on Islamic countries to reform their education system. Education in Islamic countries is not conducive for raising the level of rational thinking, or to help students in thinking differently, and expand scientific knowledge and insight. It is necessary to compel Islamic educational institutions to modify the system to minimize those factors, which enhance destructive beliefs and thinking errors. Effective educational reform must include restructuring school curriculum, and revising training curriculum for teachers. Islamic education reform can modify negative thinking process and possibly ameliorate some of the violent behavior including Jihadi terrorism. Revision of Islamic education should come from outside of Jihadi groups. Islamic countries must be forced to break the wall of denial and commit themselves to the difficult process of change. As part of the pressure, liberal democratic nations must enforce effective psycholinguistic, cognitive/behavior restructuring, and thinking for a change programs to modify Muslim's sense of righteousness and their simplistic all or nothing mentality that causes them to wage war against infidels.
Dr. Babu Suseelan is a Professor of Clinical Psychology in Pennsylvania.
Photos: 1. Indonesian Muslim protesters shout slogans in front of an office building housing the Danish Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia. 2. The Koran. 3. A Lebanese Islamist demonstrator flashes a victory sign after setting fire to the Danish consulate in Beirut February 5, 2006. 4. And Islamic school in Banda Aceh, Indonesia.

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Protesters, Police Clash at G-20 Summit

Saturday , November 18, 2006

MELBOURNE, Australia — A meeting of top financial officials from around the globe opened Saturday against a backdrop of 3,000 marching protesters, some of whom turned violent, pelting police with stones, bottles and smoke grenades.

Some 3,000 protesters marched on a downtown hotel where the Group of 20 meeting of finance ministers and central bankers opened, but most of the violence appeared to center around a group of about 200 demonstrators dressed in white coveralls with red bandanas tied around their faces.

Police struck out with batons as protesters rushed the barrier in at least two places, and at one site overturned fences and broke through the initial cordon, according to Associated Press reporters who witnessed the incidents.

A number of officers were injured, but only one seriously. Two demonstrators were arrested, and more arrests were expected, Victoria state Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon said. There were no reports of injured protesters.

"They threw missiles and rocks ... anything they could get their hands on they threw it at police and damaged property," she told reporters. "We have not had anything like this, any kind of violent demonstration in the last six years."

The unrest recalled the widespread violence at anti-globalization protests that marred the World Trade Organization's meeting in Seattle in 1999, and a meeting of the World Economic Forum in Melbourne the following year.

Protesters threw brown and red smoke grenades, shrouding the front line area in a pall, and in one place hit police with small stones, large plastic garbage bins and, occasionally, glass bottles. Police stood their ground, sometimes lashing out with batons.

Finance officials from 19 countries and the European Union, plus top officials of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund are at the talks. Formed in 1999, the G-20 includes the Group of Seven advanced industrial countries and the European Union as well as China, Brazil, India, Russia, South Korea and other major economies.

Argentina, Australia, Indonesia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Turkey fill out the group, which altogether represents about 90 percent of the world's gross national product, 80 percent of the world's trade and two-thirds of its population.

Reform of the IMF, rising interest rates, the Chinese and Japanese currency levels and efforts to economically isolate nuclear-armed North Korea also are likely to come up at the closed-door meetings.

Surging demand for oil and minerals from fast-growing economies China and India have benefited commodity powers such as Australia, while fanning concerns over the emergence of unstable supplies and market distortions.

De Rato told reporters Saturday that governments have no power to affect the value of major currencies and should leave that task to markets.

"The markets are the ones who fix the value of the most important currencies and governments won't be able to affect that," de Rato said.

On Friday, U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Robert Kimmitt renewed Washington's call for China to move faster in reforming its currency, the yuan.

"We believe that the Chinese need to accelerate the movement of their exchange rate to reflect underlying market conditions," Kimmitt told reporters.

New Brain Trust Plans Microsoft's Future
Emphasis Is Shifting From Desktop to Web
By Alan Sipress
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 18, 2006; D01

REDMOND, Wash. Gary Flake recalled scanning the faces of the three other senior Microsoft Corp. executives at a meeting last month and noticing that, like himself, they were new to the company.

They had all been key players in Internet services, a field that threatens the empire of desktop software that made Microsoft one of the world's most influential corporations. Before the meeting was over, he said, the executives agreed to complete this Internet coup -- from the inside.

"We had this realization," Flake, a senior engineer, said after the meeting adjourned. "We came to Microsoft to change the world. But the only way we're going to change the world is we're going to change Microsoft."

Never before in its 30-year history has Microsoft faced a more pressing need to turn its innovative prowess inward and remake itself. The company that became synonymous with computing for hundreds of millions of users worldwide is confronting an onslaught by rivals bent on stripping away Microsoft's customers by providing cheaper -- or free -- software over the Web.

Microsoft faces a dilemma common to many major corporations, including telephone companies, newspapers and automakers, as they wrestle with how to break loose from their traditional businesses before it's too late. Many have been unable to cannibalize their core operations, remaining intoxicated by the high profits they still provide. But the burden of maintaining the old businesses that made them titans can starve companies of the investment and initiative they need to innovate.

In the next several weeks, Microsoft plans to release new versions of the software responsible for its profitability and industry clout: a more sophisticated version of its Windows operating system called Vista and an updated business-productivity suite called Office 2007. Those two marquee products embody the essence of desktop computing and are on track for release to businesses on Nov. 30 and to consumers in January, Chairman Bill Gates said this week at the company's annual shareholders meeting.

Microsoft is at the same time reinvigorating its effort to scale the heights of the Internet with the release of Office Live, an Internet service for small businesses unrelated to the desktop programs Word and Excel that offers Web sites, domain names, company e-mail accounts and shared online workspaces. The service is part of Microsoft's bid to thread the Internet through its many of products and platforms, including game consoles, media players and corporate servers. Chief executive Steven A. Ballmer told shareholders that online services, along with entertainment, would drive growth in the future.

But for now, Windows and Office account for most of the company's revenue, an estimated $6.7 billion in the past quarter, about 62 percent of the total. And they present a fundamental challenge: each new release carries the baggage of the past because it must be compatible with all the software and hardware that ran on earlier versions.

Tens of thousands of engineering hours were spent on Vista, analysts said. It contains about 50 million lines of computer code, 40 percent more than the previous version of the operating system, Windows XP.

All that is hamstringing Microsoft's efforts at competing online.

"When I came to the company, I could see some people really got it with respect to the shift in the industry," Ray Ozzie, a celebrated engineer who joined Microsoft last year, said last week at an Internet conference in San Francisco. But, he added, "some people were heads down working on Vista, working on Office."

This is not the first time Microsoft and its 70,000 employees have revised its Internet strategy. But in the five years since Windows XP was released, the success of Microsoft's online ventures has taken on new urgency as high-speed Internet access proliferated, software migrated online and Web advertising spawned new media models.

The standard-bearer of the new Internet movement, Google Inc., has emerged as a pretender to Microsoft's throne. It dominates Web search and has introduced other services, including online spreadsheets and word processing programs that compete with Excel and Word. Google is also making the guts of its Web offerings, such as Google Maps, available to software developers so they can build their own products on top of them, much as an earlier generation engineered its software on top of Windows. Google's revenue last quarter increased nearly six times faster than Microsoft's, and its stock price is soaring while Microsoft's is generally unchanged since early 2004. The very mention of Google's name rankles many in Redmond.

For Microsoft, the Internet challenge is ironic because as much as any other company, it pioneered the age of personal computing.

"Anyone who writes them off does so at their own detriment," said Robert Horwitz, chief executive of the independent Directions on Microsoft research firm. "But it's not like the old days when they were quicker and more nimble. Microsoft has been surprised how difficult it is to create a new, profitable business."

To help it compete, Microsoft has been raiding Internet rivals and hiring people such as Flake, one of 14 Microsoft employees honored with the corporate distinction of "technical fellow." Flake and his colleagues at the meeting last month have already demonstrated they get the Internet. They included Steve Berkowitz, a former chief executive of the Internet search company Ask.com who became Microsoft's senior vice president for online services, and Debra Chrapaty, a former president of the E-Trade Group Inc. who is now Microsoft's vice president for Windows Live operations.

"Our products on the Internet are not today where they should be," said Flake, a 39-year-old with a strong, stubby jaw and even stronger opinions. "Part of the reason it's not there is because we've been focusing on a lot of different things."

Still, Flake said, he voted with his feet on the future of Microsoft. Early last year, he uprooted his family from California, where he had run research and development for Yahoo Inc., for a job in Redmond overseeing the laboratory that is developing Microsoft's online products. "The company is redefining and reinventing itself," he said.

Ozzie, the fourth and most prominent member of this insurgent fraternity, was named Microsoft's chief software architect in June, replacing Gates. Flake said the appointment shows that Microsoft is "unambiguously" committed to expanding its presence on the Web above all else. "It went from being a strategy to being the strategy," Flake added.

Ozzie is the rare pioneer who scored big not once but twice, first creating the e-mail software suite Lotus Notes and then founding Groove Networks Inc., which provides software that lets people work together on the Web. Four months after Microsoft bought Groove and hired Ozzie, he circulated an internal memo urging employees to rethink how the company is adapting to the Internet. "It's clear that if we fail to do so, our business as we know it is at risk. We must respond quickly and decisively," Ozzie wrote.

Microsoft first turned to the Internet more than a decade ago with its MSN online service, which failed to produce big revenue and drew inconsistent corporate support. In the past two years, however, Microsoft's research and development spending for online services has more than doubled to $1.1 billion a year, Ballmer said. Capital spending in this area is up fourfold, to $500 million annually.

Even traditional software that runs on desktop computers is being redesigned to exploit the Internet, in a new hybrid approach. Windows Vista, for example, includes a feature that appears on users' desktops and offers online functions, such as weather reports and news feeds from the Windows Live service, Microsoft's latest Internet initiative.

The centerpiece of Windows Live is a search engine that Microsoft considers crucial because search is the primary method for navigating the Web. "We've come a long way. But our market share is down," said Christopher Payne, corporate vice president for Windows Live Search, who won approval from Gates and Ballmer three years ago to invest in search. He noted recent research showing Google pulling farther ahead.

Payne and other Microsoft executives stressed that the battle for the Internet is far from over. With a history of successful corporate makeovers, climbing revenue, $35 billion cash on hand and an army of expert software engineers, Microsoft remains formidable. Executives across the company concur that the company is uniquely positioned to marry features of desktop computing with the potential of the Internet.

But there is no consensus inside Microsoft over whether Internet services have ousted packaged software as the company's top priority -- or even whether they should. "The center of gravity is moving toward the combination," said Jeffrey S. Raikes, president of the business division responsible for Office software. "The best thing is to optimize the combination of that horsepower."

Ozzie said Microsoft's dominant position in desktop computing gives the company a rare advantage as it turns its attention to the potential of the Web. "I've got this audience," he said at the conference last week. "All we have to do is show them that we get it."