Supporter’s signs reading, “Stop the massacre”, “Free Iran” and “Phoenix supports you.” They chanted “Joint Iran, freedom, freedom”.

Phoenix is a gathering of more than 100 events around the world Saturday in the World Day of Action.

Hundreds of thousands of Iranians protested controversial June 12 presidential elections in which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected.

The demonstrators were killed, wounded and arrested.

Global day of action is to “people of Iran in their struggle for democracy, freedom and basic civil rights,” said united director for Iran, a coalition of individuals and organizations human rights.

Rene Behinfar held in Scottsdale, Phoenix rally.

“Today, Iranians a voice,” said Behinfar. “Without people like us, nobody listens.”

Another event will be in the valley on Sunday. As a sign of protest and candlelight vigil will be held from 7:30 to 9 pm local time, at the University of Arizona, University Drive between Mill Avenue and Rural Road.

It has definitely contributed to a Pakistani narrative that the US used them to defeat the Russians, sanctioned them for their nuclear programme, and then declared India the South Asian nation with a future. Clinton accepts some of that but hints Pakistan was hardly a wide-eyed babe in the woods. New Delhi would agree. Islamabad repeatedly bandwagon with the US, China and terrorists to get military edge over India. As the network revealed, Pakistan’s nuclear programme deserved to be more than sanctioned. Superficially, a similar pattern can be seen today. Pakistan is making intermittent stands against Taliban incursions, but assists it cannot fight without billions in funds and arms. Most Indians will perturb. Given today’s circumstances, India should take a more relaxed view of the US relationship with Pakistan.

First, a Taliban takeover Of a nuclear-,armed Pakistan represents a threat ‘ to India that goes off the scale. Second, Indian policy needs to make into account evidence that its neighbor’s ruling establishment is increasingly delusional and paranoid. Third, the US is probably the only country with the wherewithal to buttress Pakistan against the Taliban and change its polity for the better. Finally, a key reason the US is finding it difficult to extract genuine cooperation from Pakistan is that Islamabad does not trust a country whose past policy was so driven by short-term tactical goals.

This leads to the broad conclusion that it is in India’s interest for the US to commit itself to be a confidence-building partnership with Pakistan. And so long as they are counter-insurgency related, arms supplies’ will have to part of this policy. President Barack Obama spoke of “the fundamental connection between the future of Afghanistan and Pakistan.” In the present circumstance!?, the connection also includes the future of India.

According to senior administration officials, two high-level reports on Pakistan and Afghanistan have called for broadening the target to a major sanctuary in and around Quetta. Mullah Muhammad Omar, who led the Taliban government that was ousted in the 2001 US-led invasion, has operated out of the region for years.

The missile strikes being carried out by Central Intelligence Agency-operated drones have never been extend­ed into Baluchistan, a sprawling province under the author of the central government, which abuts the parts of southern Afghanistan where recent fighting has been the fiercest.

There remains fear within the U.S. government that extending the raids would worsen tensions. Pakistan complains that the strikes violate its sovereignty.

But some US officials say the missile strikes in the tribal areas have forced some leaders of the Taliban and al-Qaeda to flee south towards Quetta, making them more vulnerable. In separate reports, groups led by both Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of US forces in the region, and Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, a top White House official on Afghanistan, have recommended expanding US operations outside the tribal areas if Pakistan cannot root out the strengthening insurgency:

Many of Obama’s advisers are also urging him to sustain orders issued last summer by President George W. Bush to continue Predator drone attacks against a wider range of targets in the tribal areas, and to conduct cross-border ground actions, using CIA and special operations commandos.

A spokesman for the National Security Council, Mike Hammer, declined to pro­ vide details, saying, “We’re still working hard to finalize the review on Afghanistan and Pakistan that the president requested.”

Obama’s top national security advisers, known as the Principals Committee, met Tuesday to begin debating all aspects of Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy: Senior administration officials say Obama has made no decisions, but is expected to do so in coming days after hearing the advice of that group.

AN A stunning turn of events, ari Austrian on trial for imprisoning his daughter for 24 years and fathering her seven children pleaded guilty on Wednesday to all charges against him including negligent homicide hearing his daughter’s heart wrenching testimony.

. Saying he had a change of heart, Josef Fritzi calmly acknowledged his guilt on the third day of a trial that has drawn media attention from around the world for its shocking allegations. “I declare myself guilty to the charges in the indictment,” FritzI, 73, told a panel of judges, referring at one point to what he called “my sick behavior.”

• Fritzi chained his daughter up, strapping up her arms and tying her hands behind her back with an iron chain, which he then secured to metal posts behind her bed.

• He forced her to endure sexual abuse and rape at his hands sometimes several times a day, from the second day of her incarceration right up until her release last April.

• He subjected her to humiliating sexual abuse, including forcing her to reenact scenes in pornographic films with him as

Fritzi faces life in prison on the negligent homicide count, which he initially had con­ tested along with an enslavement charge. Prosecutors also well as inserting objects into her in a violent manner.

• He told them he had installed a system so that the doors would give them electric shocks if they tried to open them and that poison would be released into the cellar if they tried to escape, killing them all instantly.

.One of the children died in 1996 as “a result of his deliberate failure to call for medical attention”, which led to her death from “acute respiratory distress syndrome”.

A psychiatrist, meanwhile, told the court on Wednesday that Fritzi had a very serious personality disorder and would still pose a threat even at his advanced age if freed. Psychiatrist’Adelheid Kastner recommended that Fritzi serve out his sentence in a psychiatric ward.

Asked by the presiding judge what had led him to change his mind, Fritzi said it was the videotaped testimony from his daughter Elisabeth that he, jurors and the rest of the court had viewed during a closed­ door session on Tuesday.

Elisabeth is the prosecution’s key witness against Fritzi. Now 42, she was 18 When he imprisoned her in the cramped, windowless cell he built beneath the family’s home in the town of Amstetten.

“China has lodged a solemn representation to the US as the USNS Impeccable conducted activities in China’s special economic zone in the South China Sea without China’s permission,” foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu told a biweekly media briefing in Beijing. ,

Reuters reported that ‘Washington had urged China to observe international maritime rules after the Pentagon said five Chinese ships, including a naval vessel, harassed the USNS Impeccable in international waters on Sunday’. A US defense department statement to the USNS. Impeccable, an unarmed ocean surveillance vessel with one ship coming within 25 feet. But in Beijing, Ma lashed out that ‘the US claims are gravely in contravention of the facts, confuse black and white, and are total­ly unacceptable to China’.

The confrontation has occurred soon after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s trip to Beijing to gather much-needed Chinese support for the US economic recovery. Both nations recently resumed military dialogue that was stalled in November after China protested planned arms sales from the US to self­ ruled Taiwan, over which China claims sovereignty.