BEIRUT (Rahnuma): Nizar Zakka, who has barely been out of Tehran’s Evin Prison 24 hours after spending nearly four years in it, still feels the impact of what happened to him. After his release, Zakka summarized what happened to him — his tears streamed down his face more than once during the interview. Zakka said he visited Iran only four times previously on official invitations, and on a fifth after an invitation from the country’s vice president to participate in a conference on informatics. “Three days after my participation in the conference, I did not feel that I was an unwanted guest and had not received any remarks. On my way back to the airport, a car with people in civilian clothes intercepted us. They took me out of the car and spoke to me in English saying that no one would see me anymore,” he told Arab News. “They arrested me, and said that they would kill me. There was no explanation for what happened, and I was tortured. They asked me to say on camera that I was working with the Americans and I planned on overthrowing the regime in Iran. I was there because of an official invitation. So, I refused their request. I felt that if it was going to end in death, why not resist what was happening to me unjustly? “They knew that I was innocent, but it seems that they wanted to send a message. The kidnappers were members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and they wanted to show that they could do what they wanted. I was an activist in the field of human rights and had free access to the internet, and expressed my opinion at a conference in Tehran. They exploited this as a weak link for international companies, to send them a message that they are forbidden to enter Iran. They succeeded, they stopped coming to Iran — they feared their safety.”

Sham trial

Regarding the trial he was subjected to, he smiled. “It was only for show. I stood in front of the judge and they began to mock me. One of them said that I was detained for inciting the revolution in Ukraine. I laughed and told the judge they had the wrong file. The representative of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps read out the accusations, without asking me a single question, and that’s how I was sentenced. The cell I stayed in had 50 detainees living in the worst conditions.” He said that in the cell, he knew Americans Ziyu Wang and Karen Godafari, former Iranian Vice President Hamid Mashaki, and Mahdi Rafsanjani, the son of former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani. He said that he also met “an Iraqi detainee and many Iranians, Kurds and Arabs. There were many Iranian diplomats, all accused of treachery because it is the easiest charge. “Every person who was arrested was subjected to physical torture of all kinds, which later turned into a psychological torture. I slept every night hoping not to wake up the next day.” As for his contact with the outside world, Zakka said: “At first they allowed us to call family members, but only for 4 minutes that would go by without speaking, and later, when they transferred me to the public prison, those who ran it allowed us a 15-minute phone call. They dealt with us more compassionately than the Revolutionary Guard did. “A year ago, I met with the director general of the Lebanese Directorate of General Security, but nothing happened. I lost hope. I was informed that Lebanese Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil spoke about my release date during Ramadan. The month went by, then Eid came, and nothing happened. Two days ago, those who imprisoned me came to tell me that I would be released.”

by bbc.com — Nizar Zakka, who is a US permanent resident, arrived in Beirut on a plane with the head of Lebanon’s General Security directorate, Abbas Ibrahim. The information technology expert was arrested while visiting Tehran in 2015 and was subsequently sentenced to 10 years in jail for anti-state activity. Zakka was freed following a request by Lebanon’s President Michel Aoun. But Iranian state television cited official sources as saying that his release was secured only after Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Iran-backed Lebanese Shia Islamist militant group Hezbollah, intervened. Accompanied by Colonel Abbas Ibrahim, head of the Lebanon’s General Security intelligence agency, Zaka headed directly to the presidential palace,for a meeting with Lebanese President Michel Aoun and his family. A spokesman for Iran’s judiciary said an Iranian court had agreed on Zakka’s “conditional release,” adding that the man would be handed over to Lebanese authorities.

The spokesman, Gholamhossein Esmaili, did not give details of the conditions of Zakka’s release. Lebanon’s president and foreign minister had urged Iran to grant an amnesty to Zakka, and Iranian media reported on June 10 that he was to be released “only because of the respect and dignity” Iran has for Iran-backed Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah. A Washington, D.C., resident and a U.S. Green Card holder, Zakka was head of an Arab IT organization that advocated for Internet development in the Middle East. He was detained in September 2015 in Tehran after attending a government-organized conference. In 2016, the 52-year-old was sentenced to 10 years in prison and handed a $4.2 million fine after a court convicted him of espionage — a charge he denied. He had been invited to speak by Iran’s then Vice-President for Women and Family Affairs, Shahindokht Molaverdi. Zakka was arrested while on his way to the airport to leave the country by men believed to belong to the Revolutionary Guards and was transferred to Tehran’s Evin prison, where he was kept in solitary confinement for almost a year. In October 2016, the judiciary said Tehran’s Revolutionary Court had sentenced Zakka to 10 years in prison for co-operating with a foreign enemy state – an allegation rejected by his family and associates. An appeals court upheld the sentence at the end of 2017.

Last September, Ms Molaverdi told the Associated Press that the government of President Hassan Rouhani, a moderate, had “in no way approved” Zakka’s prosecution by the hardline judiciary. “We did all we could to stop this from happening, but we are seeing that we have failed to make a significant impact,” she said. Last week, it emerged that Lebanon’s president had asked the Iranian authorities to pardon Zakka as a gesture to mark the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. On Tuesday, Iranian judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili announced that the relevant court had agreed to Zakka’s conditional release because he had served at least a third of his sentence and shown good behaviour. Mr Esmaili revealed Iranian officials had been told by Hezbollah’s leader that the move would be “expedient”, but he insisted “no political issue has been involved”, the judiciary’s Mizan Online news agency reported.

Zakka is one of a number of dual citizens and foreign nationals detained in Iran, mostly on spying charges, in recent years. The Americans being held include:

The document calls on Catholic schools to resist ‘attempts to negate the male-female duality of human nature’ A Vatican department has issued a sweeping denunciation of so-called gender theory, and affirmed the principles of human dignity, difference, and complementarity. “In all such [gender] theories, from the most moderate to the most radical, there is agreement that one’s gender ends up being viewed as more important than being of male or female sex,” the Congregation for Catholic Education wrote June 10, in a new document entitled “Male and Female He Created Them.” “The effect of this move is chiefly to create a cultural and ideological revolution driven by relativism, and secondarily a juridical revolution, since such beliefs claim specific rights for the individual and across society.”

The document says it aims to set out an intellectual framework “towards a path of dialogue on the question of gender theory in education.” Published at the beginning of “Pride Month,” during which many cities and corporations mark the campaign of LGBT advocacy, the document says that the Church teaches an essential difference between men and woman, ordered in the natural law and essential to the family and human flourishing. “There is a need to reaffirm the metaphysical roots of sexual difference, as an anthropological refutation of attempts to negate the male-female duality of human nature, from which the family is generated,” the document explains. “The denial of this duality not only erases the vision of human beings as the fruit of an act of creation but creates the idea of the human person as a sort of abstraction who ‘chooses for himself what his nature is to be.’”

The text, signed by Cardinal Giuseppe Versaldi, prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education, outlines the philosophical origins of the gender theory movement, and notes the broad movement to enshrine its distinct anthropology in policy and law. The Congregation explains that, beginning in the middle of the twentieth century, a series of studies were published which proposed that external conditioning had the primary determinative influence on personality. When such studies were applied to human sexuality, the document says, they did so with a view to demonstrating that sexuality identity was more a social construct than a given natural or biological fact. “These schools of thought were united in denying the existence of any original given element in the individual, which would precede and at the same time constitute our personal identity, forming the necessary basis of everything we do.” “Over the course of time, gender theory has expanded its field of application. At the beginning of the 1990s, its focus was upon the possibility of the individual determining his or her own sexual tendencies without having to take account of the reciprocity and complementarity of male-female relationships, nor of the procreative end of sexuality,” the document says. The result was a “radical separation between gender and sex, with the former having priority over the later.”

  This is an opinion article and does not necessarily represents khazen.org by Joe Macaron —lobelog.com —– On May 13, while The New York Times reported that the White House was reviewing military plans to attack Iran, a plane carrying the State Department’s Acting Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs David Satterfield quietly landed in […]

by aawsat.com —The number of Lebanese emigrants under the age of 40 is expected to reach 56,000 by the end of 2019, according to a study by Lebanon-based Information International. The same study said that 34,502 Lebanese have left their country in 2018 and did not return. While some studies link emigration to the spread of corruption and the looting of public funds, most politicians’ statements bear a warning about the dangers of this phenomenon, not only on the country’s economic and social conditions, but also on the political level, in terms of demographic imbalances. In a follow-up to the file of Lebanese emigrants, the US Department of State has classified Lebanon since 2011 in the “very high alert” circle. External migration is the most important social issue in the Lebanese society, especially since about 30 percent of its residents are non-Lebanese, a level unknown to any other country. “The number of Lebanese migrants is normal due to the conditions in their country,” said Haitham Jomaa, the former director-general of the Expatriates Department at the Lebanese Foreign Ministry and the head of the Lebanese Forum for Development and Migration. In this regard, Jomaa pointed to the lack of employment opportunities in state facilities, the absence of a national plan to direct human resources, and the growth of the number of university graduates in parallel with a decline in the number of institutions in the productive sectors and the closure of companies because of economic recession. “But this situation might not continue until the end of the year, after the adoption of the state budget and the implementation of the CEDRE recommendations, which will encourage production and hence reduce the pace of emigration,” he added.

Uber’s latest venture? An 8-minute helicopter ride from Lower Manhattan to JFK Airport that will set you back between $200 and $225 — but bargain, it includes the Uber ride on the ground for both parts of the trip. The new business, known as Uber Copter, will launch July 9 and although bookable on the […]

Being born into a wealthy family is a better indicator of success than academic performance, a new report from Georgetown found. Top-performing students from the bottom 25% in socioeconomic status have a 31% chance of going to college, getting a job that pays at least $35,000 by the time they’re 25, and at least $45,000 […]

Our prayers are with the family of the victims of this terrorist attacks! 

By Hassan Ammar and Andrea Rosa | AP – TRIPOLI, Lebanon — Military police and forensics in white overalls deployed in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli on Tuesday after a lone gunman went on an overnight shooting spree, killing four security personnel before blowing himself up in an apartment in a residential building. The rare shooting, in which the gunman used a motorcycle to move around, opening fire on police and army vehicles, shook the predominantly Sunni Muslim coastal city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr holiday, which marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan. Interior Minister Raya El Hassan told reporters that the gunman, identified as Abdul-Rahman Mabsout, is a former member of the Islamic State group and now a “lone wolf.” She said the situation was under control. The shooting began late Monday with Mabsout first firing at a branch of the Lebanese Central Bank, then driving around, shooting at police and later at an army vehicle, killing four.

With police in hot pursuit, opening fire and using tear gas, Mabsout then drove to a residential building, where he shot his way up the stairs and into an empty apartment on the fourth floor and barricaded himself inside. An hours-long standoff ensued, culminating with security forces storming the apartment. Cornered, Mabsout detonated his explosives vest, killing himself instantly. On Tuesday, there were multiple signs of battle. At least four civilian cars and one police car were heavily damaged, their windshields smashed and pocked by bullet holes. Military police and forensics removed bullets from the street. Tear gas canisters were still on the ground. The nine-floor apartment building where Mabsout died was shell pocked and the apartment itself partially destroyed. Mabsout left a message, apparently for the apartment’s owner, on a mirror. “Forgive me my Muslim brother. … God willing. I love you in God, I didn’t mean it.”

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel expects to launch U.S.-mediated talks within weeks with Lebanon on setting their maritime border, a senior Israeli official said on Tuesday, naming a U.N. peacekeeper compound in southern Lebanon as a possible venue. Lebanon has not commented publicly on whether it would attend talks or on any possible timeline. The United […]

Starting at around 3:30 EST on Sunday, a problem with Google’s cloud services triggered a massive disruption that rippled across the internet. According to the company’s own G Suite Status Dashboard, the Sunday outage at one point disrupted nearly every service Google offers in the US and Europe ranging from Gmail to Google Docs. “The network congestion issue in eastern USA, affecting Google Cloud, G Suite, and YouTube has been resolved for all affected users as of 4:00pm US/Pacific,” Google said in a statement.

The cloud outages impacted more than just Google services. Any services that leaned on Google’s cloud lost functionality, including Shopify, Snapchat, Discord, and even Rocket League game servers. Many Apple cloud-based services were also hampered by the outage, including iCloud Mail, iCloud Drive, and iMessage. Sunday’s issues once again highlighted how fragile the modern internet really is, and how reliant we are on Amazon (AWS), Microsoft (Azure), and Google (Google Cloud), who collectively dominate the $70 billion cloud computing market. The outage also again showcased that however carefully engineers may plan, having a centralized point of failure will inevitably cause headaches—especially when you’ve trusted your entire backend computing power or storage to just one company.