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Politics : Bush Administration's Media Manipulation--MediaGate? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (5980)	2/15/2006 2:54:47 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Respond to of 9838

Rice: $75 million sought to spur democracy in Iran Wednesday, February 15, 2006; Posted: 11:44 a.m. EST (16:44 GMT) WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- President Bush wants $75 million to try to spur democracy in its adversary Iran, expanding a program that skeptics say can have little effect in the Islamic republic. "The United States will actively confront the aggressive policies of the Iranian regime. At the same time, we will work to support the aspirations of the Iranian people for freedom and democracy in their country," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told a congressional budget hearing. Rice said the funds would be used to broadcast U.S. radio and television programs into Iran and pay for Iranians to study in America. She requested the money in a supplemental budget request for fiscal year 2006. Congress has already approved $10 million for such programs for the year, which begins October 1. Political analysts and Western diplomats are skeptical U.S. efforts to reach out to Iranians can work in a country where America is labeled the "Great Satan" and believed to be anti-Muslim, particularly because of a perception it favors Israelis over Palestinians. The United States, which cut diplomatic ties with Iran after its 1979 revolution, is locked in a standoff with the Islamic republic to curb what it suspects are programs to build a nuclear bomb. But the Bush administration has emphasized in recent weeks that it is not at odds with the people of Iran and said it wants to help them win freedoms from their government. Nuclear clash At the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Rice said the Iranian government had increasingly isolated itself by pursuing nuclear programs. "They have now crossed a point where they are in open defiance" of the international community, she said Wednesday. She told the committee the Bush administration has been examining the "full range of sanctions on Iran" and is also considering additional sanctions the United States could impose on its own, although international action would be more effective. Appearing before lawmakers, Rice gave no details. The United States has had broad sanctions on Iran since that country's 1979 Islamic revolution. Iran says its nuclear programs are for peaceful electricity generation. Rice said she will visit the Gulf region next week to discuss Iran's nuclear programs with Tehran's Arab neighbors. She did not specify which countries she will visit. A U.S. official has said Rice is expected to visit Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and discuss the election victory of the Palestinian group Hamas and Muslim outrage at cartoons satirizing Prophet Mohammad.

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (5980)	2/15/2006 3:46:03 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Respond to of 9838

China critics say crackdown reaches U.S. By BERNARD McGHEE, Associated Press Writer Last Updated: February 15, 2006, 11:24:17 AM PST modbee.com ATLANTA (AP) - Peter Yuan Li was beaten, tied up, blindfolded with duct tape and robbed of two laptop computers last week by three Asian men who burst into his suburban Atlanta home with a gun and knife. He and other Chinese-Americans suspect it was no ordinary robbery. Li, who works for a newspaper and Web site critical of the Chinese Communist Party, is one of several people tied to China's banned Falun Gong spiritual movement who say they have been harassed and hit with break-ins in the United States by Chinese agents. They say China has carried its crackdown on dissidents to this country. FBI spokesman Stephen Emmett said the bureau is looking into the attack on Li for potential civil rights violations and refused to comment on whether the Chinese government was behind it. The men who broke into Li's home near Duluth spoke Korean and Mandarin and left behind certain valuables, including a camcorder and television, but took his computers, a phone and his wallet, according to Li and the Fulton County police report. They also demanded unspecified documents and pried open two file cabinets, he said. "What surprises me is that in the U.S. they could do such things," said Li, a naturalized U.S. citizen who does computer work for the Web site of the Falun Gong-affiliated newspaper The Epoch Times. He now has stitches across his forehead. Fulton County Detective Gerald Hightower said there is no evidence supporting Li's claim that the attackers were sent by the Chinese government "to send a message to him," but the incident is still under investigation. Asked about the beating, a man who answered the telephone at the Chinese Embassy in Washington but declined to give his name criticized The Epoch Times as "a propaganda machine of the evil cult" and then said he knew nothing about the attack on Li. Falun Gong has been the target of a government crackdown in China, which banned the movement as an "evil cult" and a threat to communist rule in 1999. Members claim that they have been beaten and tortured and that hundreds have been killed in prisons and labor camps. Chinese authorities have denied any mistreatment. Falun Gong members in the United States have long claimed the Chinese government sends people to harass and threaten them. "It's always hard to know," said Mickey Spiegel, a researcher in the Asia division of Human Rights Watch. "But certainly it's something that would need to be investigated." Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based press freedom group, has seen attacks on Falun Gong members in South Africa, Hong Kong and Australia, but said the one in the Atlanta area might be the most serious case yet. "We are definitely intrigued by the circumstances in which the attack occurred," said Lucie Morillon, the Washington representative for Reporters Without Borders. The other cases of harassment in the United States mostly involve threatening phone calls. However, Alex Ma, a vice president for the San Francisco branch of The Epoch Times and a Falun Gong member, said his home was broken into twice last year, and in the first incident, two laptops were taken. After the first break-in, Ma said, he got a call from an older sister in China, who rarely calls. She asked him to stop doing things the government doesn't like, he said. Haiying He, a Falun Gong member who lives outside Boston, said he has gotten threatening calls. He also said that his father back in China once passed along a message from officials there that they were keeping an eye on him. In another instance, Ma said, he got a message on his home phone that was a recording of a cell phone call he had had with another Epoch Times employee. Ma said he is convinced the incidents are part of an effort by Chinese government authorities to intimidate those who criticize them. "You cannot say this is all coincidence," he said. Ma, along with Reporters Without Borders officials, said the attack on Li may have grim implications. "I think it's an upgrading of violence," he said.