Editor: Myself

Freedom House publishes regime change manuals in Persian

Freedom House's Dutch-funded Persian project, Gozaar, has published two new manuals: One to teach Iranians how to organise and manage urban riots to destabilise the Iranian government, called 'Non-Violent Struggle: 50 Crucial Points'; and another on how to disrupt the upcoming parliament election in Iran, titled 'How Domestic Organizations Monitor Elections.'

Ironically, Gene Sharp, the U.S. government's favourite regime change guru, appeared on a one-hour evening call-in show on Voice of America Persian and taught his techniques and strategies of disruption in Iran. The first caller asked him about the possibility of 'velvet revolution' in Iran and of course, Dr. Sharp was very positive.

Read more about Gene Sharp and his Albert Einstein Institute (What does Einstein have to do with regime-change, I have no idea.) in the wonderful SourceWatch.

And here is the full-length video of his guest appearance that I just uploaded to Google video.

Haroon Siddiqui and the death of Canadian independent journalism

As I was expecting, even the supposedly "progressive" Toronto Star, and even its well-known "progressive" columnist, Haroon Siddiqui, failed to mention anything about Ramin Jahanbegloo's continuous co-operation with the infamou National Endowment for Democracy which was the main reason he was arrested in Tehran in 2006.

To me this is a sad sign of the death of critical and independent journalism in Canada.

Ramin Jahanbegloo and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED)

The Iranian darling of the American regime change project (soft or hard) in Iran, Ramin Jahanbegloo, is back in Canada and being praised left ad right by the utterly appreciative and polite Canadian journalists.

I took this photo of him in 2002 when, as a former friend, I had no idea what he was up to those days. Doesn't it just work perfectly now?

But not a single one of them has even mentioned the main reason behind his arrest that was his one year service and continuous close ties with the National Endowment for Democracy, which is described by its own first president, Allen Weinstein, as an organization which is doing what "was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA." (The Washington Post, 22 September 1991)

I haven't lost all my hope in Canadian media yet, but I really wonder which Canadian newspaper or magazine is going to upset Jahanbegloo's publicists at the University of Toronto (where he is on various scholarships now) and talk about the very reason behind Iran's treatment of him.

He is going to give a lecture on Monday, Jan 28, 2008 from 07:30 pm to 09:30 pm in Isabel Bader Theatre, 93 Charles St. W. I wonder if there is at least some progressive Canadians left in Toronto who would dare and challenge him publicly about his NED connection and why he is trying to hide it.

By the way, is it just me or you are also thinking Canada is now gradually becoming the main hub for the US regime change plans in Iran? You know that Akbar Ganji is already working with the Canadian version of the NED, Rights and Democracy, and living in Toronto now.

We'll enjoy seeing you Mullah pimp in prison, a reader writes to me

I just received this gracious email from a reader, whose name I keep to myself. It's quite telling about the dominant discourse among the Iranian opposition (Pahlavists, Rajavists, and Rafsanjanists):

Hossein Jendeh,

I've just been talking to a group of university students from Rome and Florence who have been reading all about you. Apparently EVERYONE in Italy knows that you're a psycho pimp whose daddy is a servant of the akhounds. Ha Ha. You're the only one who's in a coma kosou boy.

The first thing they asked me is, are you Iranian? Do you know this guy who calls himself Hoder? What's wrong with this guy....he thinks people are stupid and don't know how to recognize a liar? So I laughed and told them that everyone now knows that you're a Mullah pimp and that your daddy is one of the regime's biggest pimps.

By the time we're all done with you (oh yes, there are hundreds of people out there exposing you and if you only knew just who knows about you, you'd have a heart attack). Keep up the good work because you're the only one who has NO IDEA what is being dug up out there and who is doing the digging. By the time we're done with you, your bosses back in Tehran will have to drag you back to Tehran for having made a bigger mess of your mission and you'll be in Evin's 209 for a little slap and tickle. I'll enjoy the news of you in those dungeons.

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Impossibility of the media: Huckabee's case

If nothing else, Mike Huckabee's surprising win in Iowa last week is yet another evidence why Laclah and Boudriallard are right on target in their ideas against media as the determining factor in elections. He had spent almost zero money in Iowa and don quite a tiny bit of campaigning there.

Robert Tait should have been fired by The Guardian's editors much earlier

Even though it is sad he has to leave Iran, to be honest with you, I'm quite happy to see Robert Tait leaving his job as The Guardian's Tehran correspondent.

He is a great example of a lot of journalist who were painting a rosy picture of Iran under the reformist government and after they favourite candidate, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, unexpectedly lost the election, suddenly started to rediscover Iran as the most brutal and dangerous theocratic dictatorship in the world.

In the past two years, Robert Tait's reporting not much different from any given Fox News reporter, except that Tait always kept his faith in and loyalty to Rafsanjani and his allies.

Gareth Smyth, Financial Times' correspondent, who sadly was forced to leave Iran recently described the type of journalism that the likes of Tait were doing in a recent article, titled "Breaking eggs in Iran":

[T]here was a strong western view that the reformists (popular, goodies) were confronting the conservatives (unpopular, baddies) over social freedom and women's clothes. Everything had to fit that model...

[O]nce Ahmadinejad was elected, the real circus began in such haste there was no time, even had there been the inclination, for any rational media post mortem. American and Israeli officials - and some news editors - questioned the new president's sanity
and intelligence.

Ahmadinejad came to power as a fundamentalist but then ordered sports authorities to lift the ban on women attending top football matches. By then Syast-e Ruz, a newspaper close to the President, had scoffed at election-time rumours that he would segregate men and women on pavements and in cemeteries. Those who knew Ahmadinejad best were least surprised. They said his religion was closer to the organic faith of the mass of Shia Iranians than to the learned ayatollahs.

I personally remember at least two occasions where Tait was lying outright about which I blogged:

• "Iran hangs 30 over 'US plots'"

• "Censorship fears rise as Iran blocks access to top websites"

I guess any fair observer would agree with me that if Mr. Tait had filed such false and baseless reports about any other country, he would have been sacked by his own editors. But when it comes to Iran, Cuba, Syria and now Russia, every deviance from basic codes of journalism is tolerated, even by a supposedly progressive The Guardian.

Is this piece going to cost me my regular columns at The Guardian? I hope not, and I wish The Guardian replaces him with someone who would be a journalist this time, not a shameless Foreign Office propagandist.

Ultimately, perhaps, Mr. Tait should go to his previous job as the Jerusalem correspondent for The Times. There he would fit rather perfectly.

Ramin Jahanbegloo's articles for NED's Journal of Democracy

Ramin Jahanbegloo is one of the best known Iranian comprador intellectuals who, predictably, was a fellow at The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) in 2001-2002. He was arrested last year by the Iranian intelligence ministry and freed on bail a few months later.

Now he is apparently off to Toronto as the Dean's Distinguished Visitor in Human Rights at the University of Toronto. Again quit predictably. (I'll soon write about the recent of pres articles being published about him.)

If you are interested in his and other Iranians contribution to NED's Journal of Democracy, here is a list I've produced:

• Jahanbegloo, Ramin. "PRESSURES FROM BELOW." Journal of Democracy 14, no. 1 (January 2003): 126.

• Jahanbegloo, Ramin. "THE ROLE OF THE INTELLECTUALS." Journal of Democracy 11, no. 4 (October 2000): 135.

• Afshari, Ali, and H. Graham Underwood. "THE STUDENT MOVEMENT'S STRUGGLE." Journal of Democracy 18, no. 4 (October 2007): 80-94.

• Kar, Mehrangiz. "CONSTITUTIONAL CONSTRAINTS." Journal of Democracy 14, no. 1 (January 2003): 132.

• Esfandiari, Haleh. "OBSERVATIONS ON ELECTION DAY." Journal of Democracy 11, no. 4 (October 2000): 108.