Remember Mansour Osanloo and the bus driver association's strike in Iran last year which was heavily publicised by all Anglophone and Anglophone-funded media? Now the following paragraph from this great article on National Endowment for Democracy's funded projects on Iran, researched by the Australian Michal Barker, suggests that the NED has indeed been working on Iranian labor groups for a while:
In 2005, the American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS also known as the Solidarity Center) obtained $185,000 from the NED to “support the emergence of a sustainable independent labor movement” in Iran. To understand the type of labor groups usually drawn into cooperating with the Solidarity Center, it useful to examine recent NED-related activities in Venezuela. Here we find that the NED provided aid to the organisations involved in the (temporary) ousting of democratically elected Hugo Chavez in 2002. They also provided the Solidarity Center with nearly US$600,000 between 1997 and 2001, significant due to the close links to the Confederation of Venezuelan Workers (the group involved in the strike actions against Chávez in 2003). [36]
With regard to the Solidarity Center’s recent work in Iran, the NED notes that the money they received in 2005 would be used to “conduct an international workshop for Iranian labor leaders to acquire skills and benefit from the experiences of other trade unionists.” To protect the attendee’s identities, such meetings are carried out in secret. However, it is likely that such workshops are used to put Iranian labor activists in contact with other NED activists, like for example those involved in opposing Chavez in Venezuela.
Kenneth Katzman's alaysis on Iran's situation, on his recent appearance (Watch the full interview) on VOA Persian, was better than I expected. He said regime change in Iran is impossible, MKO has no real following in Iran and neither has Reza Pahlavi, and Revolutionary Guard is under full control of Khamanei.
But for a high profile analyst who gives advice to the congress, it was strange to see him making the common mistake of seeing Ahmadinejad as the main person in charge of the nuclear policies. In his whole interview he didn't mention a word about the Supreme Security Council, headed by Ali Larijani, that is effectively running every aspect of the nuclear programme and almost the entire foreign policy of Islamic Republic.
The funniest part of the interview was when he was faced with the impressive analytical skills of VOA's regular pro-Pahlavi callers and their sophisticated arugmentation skills and he had to keep a serious look on his face. Although the last caller from Iran made a totally unexpected point about VOA's anti-Iranian bias resulted from the U.S. government's funding and a reference to The Guardian's piece comparing Iran's treatment of British sailors and that of the U.S. on Iraqis in Abu Ghuraib.
But for God's sake, someone reminds Bijan Farhoodi that he is supposed to be an independent, impartial journalist there, not a mouthpiece for Pentagon. Yes, he's got a great voice, but that is at best makes him qualified as an news anchor, not as an interviewer.
Towards the end of the year, amidst my crazy life as a modern gypsy, I forgot to renew a valuable domain name: Stop censoring us.
But thanks to its new owner who accepted to sell me back the domain for 20 dollars, the only and the oldest source of information (since 2003) about Internet censorship in Iran is back online. (It badly needs to be updated too.)
Ever since it suddenly disappeared, some people quickly started to speculate about the behind the scenes reasons of the incident. Those who are already disturbed by my new understanding of the world as a globalised Iranian and my increasing support for the Islamic Republic as an unprecedented legitimate, democratic anti-Imperial movement, were impatient enough to fit this into their conspiracy-driven mind and cal it as another evidence that I have indeed become a paid agent of the Islamic Republic.
But let me tell you that stop censoring us will continue working until no website, including my own blogs, is blocked in Iran. Yes, I support the Islamic Republic, but I also try to change it for a more tolerant and just system. Unlike most Iranian exilés who have preferred to stand with the U.S. Empire against their own country and their own people.
It's sad to see how many exiled Iranian 'experts' have exchanged their objectivity and independent sense of truth with a pro-American bias. Although, when you live in the U.S. and want to work in a think-tank, even a democrat-leaning one, it would be very self-destructive to do otherwise.
I've been following Karim Sajadpour since he was an expert with International Crisis Group and have usually found his analysis from a rather objective and independent point of view.
But his recent column in the Washington Post's PostGlobal, titled 'The Costs of Iran’s Political Pageantry' suggests he has departed from his previous perspective and now very clearly sees the world from an American point of view rather than an objective, independent one.
I hope it has nothing to do with his new job as an analyst at the American Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The following is a comment under his column that I think has done a valid and brief critique of Sajadpour's piece:
Mr. Sadjadpour is making a commentary not from an objective, non biased point of view, but rather from a very Pro-American / Pro-British point of view, and therefore he negates the possible informative aspect of this article in to no more than "spin" and propaganda, which is no different than the behavior of some of the Iranian elements which he attempts to scrutinize and show criticism towards.
His article is also intentionally misleading towards the true dynamics of these current events in attempt to make something appear to be one thing when it is something else all together.
In one line Sadjadpour says: "After all, Iran publicly humiliated its long-time nemesis Britain", and though this statement is true, as technically speaking Britain came out of this with the short end of the stick and Iran has acquired some well deserved points for its proficiency in nonconventional diplomacy, the fact of the matter is that Sadjadpour attempts to mislead us all when he states "Tehran may feel like it has chastened the Europeans to think twice before working in concert with the U.S. . . "
The "Europeans"? Granted the U.K. is a member of the European Union, but Britain does not represent European interests in the Middle East, nor have the "Europeans" as a collective been affected in any significant way by the recent events between Iran and the U.K., events which has definitely affected Britain.
If Iran was trying to convey a message to anyone, it's message was to the United States, The United Kingdom and Israel and more importantly a message to it's Arab neighbors. Yet to say that this issue was between "Europe" and Iran in any direct or indirect manner, or that there is some sort of ongoing political tension between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Europe is purely BOVINE EXCREMENT as they might say.
It appears to be an ongoing pattern for the western world to both misrepresent the truths of what is occurring in the Middle East and at the same time to underestimate both Western and Local Middle Eastern capabilities to confront the issues and tensions which seem to perpetually stir in the region.
Both the United States and the U.K. have made very critical and significant mistakes and miscalculations when dealing with both the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan, two nations which did not even come close to the capabilities of Iran currently possesses in way of Martial philosophy and stratagem. If the United States and the U.K. are finding it difficult to manage and contain Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran would only turn out to be the greatest and most long lasting mistake that the U.S. could ever make if it decided to initiate an open and actual conflict the the Islamic Republic.
Sadjadpour highly criticizes Iran for double standards, yet fails to own up to the double standards of both the United States and Great Britain.
There are no innocent players in this game. The United States and The U.K. are no less oppressive than Iran, and I would venture to say though that Iran might end up the more justified in the long run.
Iran may not emerge out of this as "The Winner" in the long run, but neither will it become the "loser" either. The only ones who will fail to succeed and suffer loss in this continuing SNAFU will be the United States and the United Kingdom, two nations which seem to never learn from their previous historical mistakes.
There are some lessons we can all learn from this:
My latest comment in The Guardian's commentary section is about Iran's possible use of disinformation and global media in its PR war with the Anglo-saxon media. You can leave your comments below the piece in the Guardian's website.
Tricks of the intelligence trade (The Guardian)
A likely scenario, I think, is that the Iranian interrogators have been feeding disinformation to the British sailors and have managed to make them believe not only that they were in Iranian waters when caught but that the British government has also admitted this and apologised for it, and that now they have realised their mistake, a genuine apology would best serve their own and their country's interest.
There the UK and US governments fed the media with disinformation and the media in turn manipulated the people into doing what the government wanted: approving and supporting the invasion of Iraq.
Here, the Iranian Intelligence service has fed the detained sailors with a different type of disinformation to have them do or say what Iran wants: admitting the border violation and apologising for it, and then it has used the media to spread these statements.
What Iran is doing now by using the combination of disinformation and global media has long been used by the UK and US governments. Iran has just learned its lesson very well.