{"id":183943,"date":"2012-09-28T18:09:00","date_gmt":"2012-09-28T23:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2012\/09\/28\/because-they-are-our-terrorists-dammit\/"},"modified":"2012-09-28T18:09:00","modified_gmt":"2012-09-28T23:09:00","slug":"because-they-are-our-terrorists-dammit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2012\/09\/28\/because-they-are-our-terrorists-dammit\/","title":{"rendered":"Because They are Our Terrorists, Dammit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The State Department has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/world-us-canada-19767043\">dropped the MEK from its terrorist organization list<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">The US has removed the dissident Iranian group Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK) from its terror blacklist.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Secretary of State Hillary Clinton formally removed the group after sending a classified opinion to Congress earlier in September.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The organisation had been designated a terror group by the US since 1997.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The MEK led a guerrilla campaign against the US-backed Shah of Iran in the 1970s and also opposed Iran&#8217;s clerical leaders who replaced the Shah.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Also known as the People&#8217;s Mujahideen Organisation of Iran, the group insists it has renounced violence.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The state department said its decision had been taken in view of the MEK&#8217;s public renunciation of violence, the absence of any confirmed acts of terrorism by the organisation for more than a decade and its co-operation in the closure of their paramilitary base in Iraq.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I guess that all that lobbying money that they spread around Washington&#8217;s elite lobbyists, money which was  technically a felony to take, paid off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The State Department has dropped the MEK from its terrorist organization list: The US has removed the dissident Iranian group Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK) from its terror blacklist.Secretary of State Hillary Clinton formally removed the group after sending a classified opinion to Congress earlier in September.The organisation had been designated a terror group by the US &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1034,1076],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-183943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-iran","category-terrorism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183943"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183943\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}