Editor: Myself

Satrapi's 'Persepolis': Good versus evil, again (The Guardian)

Finally I sat down and wrote about 'Persepolis', Marjane Satrapi's anti-Iran's Spielberg-backed piece of propaganda. Here it is:

Good versus evil, again (The Guardian)

Persepolis is a black-and-white film which also adopts a very black-and-white view of Iran, Hossein Derakhshan writes.

May 15, 2008

Marjane Satrapi's film, Persepolis must have made George Bush and his new ally, Nicolas Sarokzy, quite happy. After all, despite Satrapi's rhetoric against the two leaders, her film's core argument is one that Bush and Sarkozy have long been busy constructing: the evil state versus the wonderful people.

Read the full article

Polls: Stong majority of Iranians are against Israel

From Terror Free Tomorrow's recent poll on Iran (Full report in PDF):

63 percent of Iranians oppose any peace treaty recognizing the State of Israel and favor all Muslims continuing to fight until there is no State of Israel in the Middle East.

Only less than a quarter of Iranians favor a peace treaty recognizing the State of Israel, even if an independent Palestinian state is established.

Likewise, more than 60 percent support the government of Iran providing military and financial assistance to Palestinian opposition groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

45 percent of Iranians would, however, favor recognizing the State of Israel as part of a deal with the U.S., though this is down from the 55 percent we found in June.

59 percent of Iranians also support the government of Iran providing military and financial assistance to Iraqi Shiite militias (33 percent oppose), while 61 percent back such assistance to Hezbollah in Lebanon (32 percent oppose).

From World Public Opinion's 2007 poll on Iran: (Full report in PDF)

A large majority of Iranians have a negative view of Israel’s influence in the world, while nearly half of Americans concur. Iranians and Americans have largely opposing views about the influence of a number of countries and actors in the Middle East, with Iranians having mostly positive views and Americans having chiefly negative ones.

Asked about the influence of Syria in the world, a majority of Iranians (61%) said it had a “mainly positive” influence, while a majority of Americans (71%) said “mainly negative.” Similarly, a large majority of Iranians (73%) said the Palestinians’ influence in the world was positive, while the exact same majority of Americans (73%) said it was mainly negative.

These divergent views extend to non-state actors in the Middle East. A majority of Iranians (56%) said the influence of Hamas was mainly positive, while 77 percent of Americans said its influence in the world was mainly negative.

The contrast in views of Hezbollah, a Shiite organization, is even more striking: 75 percent of Iranians thought HEzbollah's influence in the world was mainly positive, while 80 percent of Americans believed it was mainly negative.

Iranians also had a positive opinion of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. A large majority of Iranians (81%) had a favorable view of Nasrallah, inclusing 59 percent very favorable.

The pattern of diametrically opposed Iranian and American evaluations of Middle Eastern actors is broken in the case of Israel. While an overwhelming majority of Iranians (83%) said they believed Israel had a mainly negative influence in the world, a plurality of Americans (48%) shared that view. Forty-four percent of Americans said Israel had a mainly positive influence.

Challenging pro-Israel bias on the BBC World Service show

I was a guest last week on the BBC World's Have your say programme, talking about Iran, Syria and Israel's nuclear programmes. Predictably, the other guests were all Pro-Israel Jewish Americans, but I think I didn't do that bad in challenging their usual self-fulfilling prophecy. Does anyone know if a transcript is available?

Here is the official BBC description of the show:

Does every country have the right to be nuclear? (Listen to the entire show - MP3 file)

25 April 2008

America has accused Syria or developing a reactor with North Korea's help. If it was there, it's not anymore as Israel bombed the site. Syria says the accusations are nonsense. But what of the principle here... Why shouldn't Syria or any other country develop nuclear facilities whether for weapons or energy? 45 african countries have expressed their desire for nuclear power... Would you oppose them getting it?

Duration: 51mins | File Size: 24MB

Iran Elections 2005: How reformists lost it (Video documentary)

During the 2005 presidential elections, I made loads of short videos with my little Canon photography camera, mostly from the reformists campaign where I spent most of my time.

Then when I got back, I was invited to have a little presentation in the Middle East department at the Columbia University about what I saw in the elections. I decided to put them together in a few chapters and make a longer version documentary.

I wanted to put it in this blog before the recent parliament elections, but I didn't manage to. Here it is now:

Watch: Iran Elections 2005

What VOA's women show wants

Sometimes they give it to you so frankly and beautifully that you can't believe it. This is from the Voice of America's Persian section programme schedule for yesterday. Isn't it like poetry? I wish I had a rock band and I could use this in a song.

Today’s Woman features a profile with. Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, former U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander, and Founder of American Islamic Forum for Democracy, regarding his views on Iranian women activists.

Radio Zamaneh commissions Abdee Kalantari's Orientalist prose, Kargozaaran republishes it

Looking deeper at the Dutch government-funded Radio Zamaneh's 'Andisheh' (or Ideas) section reveals an uncomfortable truth about what this project actually pursues.

Abdee Kalantari, a U.S.-based regular contributor to this section (and his friend Mehdi Khalaji) has for over the past year consistently recycled Bernard Lewis' arguments. He explicitly dismisses the entire idea of colonialism and advocates such a Eurocentric and Universalist inquiry that, if translated into English, could even be shockingly racist. (Example: Why is the West Afraid of the "Islamic Bomb"?)

The most interesting aspect of all this is that his shallow, racist, and Orientalist articles are not only being handsomely paid by Radio Zamaneh, but they are sadly republished in a reformist daily newspaper in Iran, called Kargozaran, which is run by allies of Hashemi Rafsanjani and is named after their political party, Hezb-e Kargozaran. They probably pay Kalantari for them too. (For instance, in September 2007, eight articles were published in Radio Zamaneh and Kargozaran in a series titled ''A critque of new-nativism'.)

This basically means that the Dutch government is directly funding and advocating a certain line of thinking in the mainstream Iran-based media, and yet it is being tolerated by the Iranian government.

But let's imagine if one wants to challenge Kalantari's prose, given that Radio Zamaneh has never commissioned any critique or counter view to these pieces, who could spend so much time and energy to continuously writing criticism of Zamaneh's articles without being compensated? And if one produces such critiques, how could he or she give it the same exposure that Kalantari's pieces get thanks to the wealthy publishers of his stuff in Amsterdam or in Tehran?

No wonder why Edward Said and other post-colonial thinkers are virtually unknown within Iranian intellectual circles in Iran. From the one hand, writings of the likes of Kalantari are being commissioned and published in Iran by the Euro-American public diplomacy machine, from the other hand the government in Iran doesn't get the necessity of challenging these ideas.

NIAC's Hadi Ghaemi and Dokhi Fassihian held (likely) NED-funded workshop in Tehran in 2004

I think I now know about one of the NED-funded workshops that NIAC had done in Iran.

In 2004, with pretext of the earthquake in Bam, Hadi Ghaemi (a NIAC's founding member and now a Human Rights Watch senior officer) and Dokhi Fassihian (a then NIAC executive) held a two-day workshop in Tehran for a group of Iranian NGOs 'aimed at strengthening the ability of NGO’s to document and present their work to funders.'

NIAC's press release names Hamyaran, a capacity-building NGO which is founded and run by Baquer (or Bagher) Namazi (father of Siamak Namazi, a former NED fellow), as its organizer. It also quotes from Ghaemi as:

This workshop was a highly successful collaboration between NIAC and Hamyaran. It achieved two important objectives: Firstly, it provided the NGO community in Iran with concrete professional skills, enabling them to use digital video technology for documenting their work and articulating their message to a broad audience. Secondly, the workshop established valuable links between NIAC and Iranian NGOs. We were able to learn of their needs firsthand and we look forward to providing such effective capacity building tools in the future.

Interestingly enough, in November 2005, Baquer Namazi, was invited by Haleh Esfandiari to Woodrow Wilson Center to talk about the ' The State of Civil Society & NGOs Under Iran’s New Government .'

I might be wrong in stating that this particular workshop was funded specifically by NED, but perhaps NIAC can publisize and thereby clarify how exactly they have spent NED's funds.

NED funds NIAC: Trita Parsi must explain

I always thought of Trita Parsi, the president of National Iranian-American Council (NIAC), as a realist and progressive Iranian (I'm not sure if he is an American citizen yet) whose successful lobby group tries to convince the Americans that the Islamic Republic is here to stay and the U.S. eventually has to acknowledge the reality of this sovereign, democratic state which is built on a resistance against the Euro-American universalism.

But in the light of the events in the past few years, and despite my acquaintance with him and the admiration I generally have for most of things that he has done in NIAC, I would like to raise some doubts and I expect the progressive Iranian-Americans demand explanation from NIAC and Trita Parsi.

National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the bipartsian and sophisticated regime-change machine of the U.S. has awarded three grants to NIAC since its creation in 2002. I directly quote from NED's website:

National Iranian American Council (NIAC) - 2006
$107,000
To foster cooperation between Iranian NGOs and the international civil society community and to strengthen the institutional capacity of NGOs in Iran. NIAC will conduct a three-week training program on project design and grant writing for a group of 14 Iranian civil society leaders. NIAC will assist the trainees in designing a project to be implemented inside Iran and developing grant proposals for their prospective projects.

National Iranian-American Council (NIAC) - 2005
$64,000
To foster cooperation between Iranian and international civic groups and foundations, NIAC will translate resource materials on capacity building into Farsi and post them on its website. To strengthen the capacity of civic organizations in Iran, NIAC will hire a Farsi-English speaking expert to advise local groups on project development, proposal writing and foreign donor relations.

National Iranian American Council (NIAC) - 2002
$25,000
To design and implement a two-day media training workshop in Iran for forty staff members from five civic groups. The training will cover public education and outreach, video production, script writing, and graphics usage, and will help the Council gauge participants general receptiveness to civic activities. Participants will also be trained in project development and proposal writing and will be encouraged to identify their needs, develop a public message, and outline an appropriate publicity campaign.

I think Trita Parsi and NIAC owe an explanation why they have received nearly $200,000 of funds from the NED, what exactly have done with it, and what are the civil society groups in Iran who have been trained using this funding.

How can Parsi and NIAC claim to be against the US intervention in Iran and yet continuously be funded by a U.S. state-funded organization whose entire mission is to intervene in sovereign states' affairs in order to expand American interest and control?

State Department funded Freedom House's new research on iranian textbooks by Saeed Paivandi

The Freedom House last year commissioned a research, led by a Paris-based 'leftist' sociologist named Saeed Paivandi, on the Iranian school textbooks. I'm sure you don't even need to read the report to guess what the conclusions are: Iran is systematically teaching all its children and youth to basically be mysogonists, racists and Islamist militants. But what else?

The textbooks criticize the West (Europe, North America, and Russia) from four main angles:

1. Europe and the United States are portrayed as enemies of Iran's political independence;
2. the West conspires against the current Islamic regime and against Islamist movements generally;
3. colonial rule by Europeans was unjust to the Islamic countries of the Middle East, and the interests of Islamic countries conflict with those of Western countries; and
4. the Islamist discourse of the textbooks expresses opposition to the West as the birthplace of modern society and sees a clash of civilizations between the West and the Islamic world,

Obviously the Freedom House doesn't agree. But what has outraged the Jerusalem Post about the textbooks are not much different from the above paragraph in its refreshing truthfulness that I'm sure you can't find in any other country:

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict also appears in the textbooks as a major issue for Muslim countries, with Israel portrayed as an enemy, and an agent of the US.

"The textbooks view Israel as an 'enemy' of Islamic countries and Muslims and an 'agent' of the US and other Western countries. In the textbooks, Israel is 'The regime occupying the Holy Land,' its land is 'occupied Palestine,' and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the most important concern of Islamic countries.

For example, 'God willing, the day will come when Muslims will all be united and free Palestine and rescue the Holy Land from the clutches of the enemies of Islam.' (Grade 3 Social Studies textbook, p. 57),' the report states.

But if you wonder who has funded the research, I quote from the first pages of the full report (PDF Format):

We are grateful to the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) for their commitment to this project. Producing this report would not have been possible without their generous funding and unwavering support.

Here are the rest of the research team, just in case:

Freedom House also wishes to thank the project’s Advisory Board for their valuable editorial comments and feedback on the report, which improved the quality of the text. The Advisory Board was comprised of the following individuals:

• Antonia Cortese, Executive Vice President, American Federation of Teachers
• Hormoz Hekmat, Managing Editor, Iran Nameh, Foundation for Iranian Studies
• Sanam Vakil, Visiting scholar of Middle East Studies, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Bologna, Italy

Washington Post rejected Reza Pahlavi's opinion piece?

They say Reza Pahlavi has published an op-ed in the Washington Post. But I can't find the tiniest trace it on their website. Maybe it was his April Fool's joke? Or maybe the Wp has actually rejected his submission (which is in quite a lame style and has nothing new in it), but Reza Pahlavi just doesn't want to lose face. Poor little thing.

Ahmadinejad is not doing that bad -- even regarding the economy (The Guardian)

My latest column for the Guardian is to expose the latest wave of anti-Iran propaganda that tries to portray Ahmadinejad's popularity as diminishing, especially because of his economic policies. This is just spin and the recent elections results and a recent American poll suggest that things are not that bad for Ahmadinejad.

I should note that the title is not what I've chosen for this article. It's the Guardian editors' fault if it's too vague:

Chorusing disapproval (The Guardian)

Press reports that Iran's underperforming economy has made Ahmadinejad's government unpopular may be little more than wishful thinking

By Hossein Derakhshan

t's become quite fashionable for journalists to report on the diminishing popularity of the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (for example in the Independent, the Herald Tribune and the New York Times), especially focusing on the consequences of his economic policies, which were seen as one of the main reasons he was elected.

But facts on the ground suggest Ahmadinejad is as popular as ever.

Continue reading

Global Voices, angry on Tibet coverage by media, does the same to Iran - sadly

Founders of Global Voices, a project I was involved in it first few months, Ethan Zuckerman and Rebecca MacKinnon are outraged by how the Euro-American media is misrepresenting, twisting and even fabricated the facts of the recent incident in Tibet.

I left two comments under their related posts in which I tried to say how all this is similar to the way Iran has been treated for almost 30 years by the same media. There are clues on why I have distanced myself from the Global Voices in the past couple of years.

I left this for Ethan:

Great post, Ethan. But I wonder why the Global Voices coverage on Iran is so terribly biased against the Iranian state and is so similar to what you read everyday in the mainstream media? Why is everything so one-sided?

Frankly, I think there is need for more editorial care when it comes to Iran. No one can trust an anonymous section editor with a pseudonym who can easily hide his or her politics behind a mask of anonymity. And this is worse when there is only one person or view that is covering a huge blogosphere.

And this for Rebecca, who is actually the drive behind this coverage since she lives and works in China:

Great job and great observation, Rebbecca. I'm glad you moved to China, because now you can understand what people like me have been saying for a long time about how the Euro-American media easily twists the facts and gets away with it.

What is happening to reporting on China is actually very similar to the coverage on the Iranian elections, anything that Ahmadinejad says, women, student and workers protests, etc.

I'm affraid to say even the Global Voices' coverage on Iran follows the same pattern in just reproducing the Israeli-American propaganda against Iran, by heavily quoting from a small group of opposition bloggers.

Just take a look at the coverage yourself and compare it to the Chinese coverage. It's quite one-sided and not balanced at all, especially in terms of the topics that are selected and also the blogs that are quoted. Can you for example find anything positive about Ahmadinejad or the state in general, while there is a big chunk of the Iranians blogs now who are supportive of the state and even Ahmadinejad.

Russian, Syria, Iran, Venezuella, Cuba and now China are being misrepresented and demonised on a daily basis in the Western press and sadly Global Voices more or less repeats the same type of coverage.

The good thing is that you are now in China and can see the ugly reality of such propaganda. But what about the rest?

I'm sure by living in Iran for six months and being able to speak the language and hang out with people outside the Northern Tehran bubble, you'd reach to the same conclusion.

Ahmadinejad made Bush show respect to Iran, people say

So the White House has officially celebrated Nowrooz, the Iranian new year, by setting up a Haft Sin table in the State Dining Room. Another example of public diplomacy? Maybe. Does it fool Iranians to understand how much the U.S. government cares for them? Mmm, I'm not sure.

A random comment I found the other day on an Iranian website would give the White House an idea about how their attempt is being read in Iran.

The commentator basically said when Khatami was appeasing the Americans and talked of dialogue with the U.S., Bush called Iran evil and put it in an axis along with North Korea and Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Now that Ahmadinejad is aggressively standing up against the Americans, the same Bush has started to finally show some respect for the Iranian culture and Nowrooz and have even set up a Haft Sin table -- and even explicitly acknowledges Iran's right for civil use of nuclear energy.

If Iran continues to be defiant and doesn't give up its rights, an average Iranian would argue, the next step would be for the U.S. to acknowledge the right of the Iranian state to exist and accept that the Islamic Republic is a government that a strong majority of Iranians (Not of the type Bush usually gets to meet or get advice from) have chosen and have given legitimacy.

Another term for Ahmadinejad will convince the Americans that the Islamic Republic is Iran is here to stay.

Why Ahmadinejad is going to be re-elected

Reading this recent Spiegel's story on the roots of Ahmadinejad's popularity simply brought me into tears. This man deserves a lot more respect from all of us. I really regret the time I was so against him as a result of reading so much crappy 'journalism' that the reformists and their foreign allies have been publishing about this man and constantly hanging out with the rich and the nouvo-riche of the Northern Tehran. Honestly, many of us have been extremely unfair and to him and those who supported him.

Ahmadinejad is going to be re-elected, as Dieter Bednarz, wonderfully explains why and I think I'm going to proudly vote for him. I have never seen an Iranian politician so caring and so humble about the needy and the oppressed. Let the his capitalist foes in or out of Iran bash him day and night, but he is in people's heart.

Just read these excerpts from Der Spiegel's story and if you haven't watched Majid Majidi's 'Children of Heaven,' (Part one, part two) watch it:

To understand why the poor remain loyal to the president, you have to travel to Shush -- a district located halfway to the gigantic shrine of the revolutionary leader, a complex on the southern outskirts of Tehran. In Khomeini’s last will and testament, he asked to be laid to rest near the “Mostazafin” -- the poorest of the poor.

Anyone who owns an old motorcycle in this area ranks among the more prosperous residents. Rahman Behnami, 60, is not one of them. The father of seven children repairs shoes for a living. Over the past 24 years, the glue has eaten into the tips of his fingers. He doesn’t own a watch and he has no teeth, but has “great faith in God.” This also means that he lets his neighbour tell him who to vote for. “We are too poor to take an interest in politics,” says Mehrdad Shiri, 23, who runs two kebab joints with his father and wields a certain amount of influence in Shush.

He “took care of us even when he was the mayor of Tehran,” says Shiri, while he attends to his few customers. He talks about how Ahmadinejad came here personally -- to these filthy narrow streets, where a man like Larijani would never set foot. That’s why Shiri voted for him. And he’ll do it again. The president has a knack of appearing to be everywhere at once -- and that’s one of the secrets of his success. As the former mayor, he knows that elections are not won in the intellectual north of Tehran but among the grassroots, particularly in rural areas. He doesn’t seem to care that his spectacular appearances cost a fortune and actually hinder the work of the government, as the opposition contends. Ahmadinejad has already visited all 30 provinces with his cabinet.

Ahmadinejad began to present himself as a man of the people back when he was the mayor. Shortly after his election in March 2003, he opened a kind of public consultation office where people could air their grievances just a stone’s throw from his residence on 72nd Square, in a rather proper neighbourhood in eastern Tehran. Today, less than 100 meters from the plain brick house of the Ahmadinejads, petitioners still submit letters to the current president.

Razai Said Hassan, 60, who has lived a few blocks away for quite some time, can name a handful of acquaintances who have been helped by the head of state: Widows received government grants worth 5 million tumans -- the equivalent of €3,500 -- and others were helped with loans. “He’s really there for us,” says Hassan with praise.

“May God protect him,” says Atife, 28, who has managed to make the jump from the poor south to the centre of town. Back in the slums, she had to live in one room with her husband, her son and her mother-in-law. “It was hell.” Now her small family has two rooms in the better neighbourhood of Bani Hashem.

In their humble flat, bare light bulbs hang from the ceiling. The sofa, the glass cabinet and virtually all of Atife’s belongings are actually second-hand worn-out furnishings distributed by a private foundation. Out of gratitude, she now visits their Koran readings once a week. An acquaintance of Atife’s owes her happiness directly to the president. A fund created by Ahmadinejad granted her a loan for her wedding.

No one can say how long the head of state can afford to be this generous. Many of the newly-elected members of parliament want to put an end to the populist good deeds and have already announced tough debates on the budget. But even harsh critics like former government advisor Lailas think that Ahmadinejad still has a good chance of being re-elected.

According to his close aide Ramin, the president wants to stick to his approach of travelling and distributing to the needy.

“The public coffers are full, very full,” says the friend of the president -- and seeks a comparison with the Prophet: “Didn’t Mohammed distribute the state treasury to the poor before he lay down to sleep?”

Poll: Satisfaction with Iranian economy doubled since June 2007

A lot is being published and said these days about ahmadinejad's diminishing appeal. But aside from this recent parliament elections, I have another reason to say that it is all wishful thinking.

Just take a look at this recent poll results (full PDF version) on Iran, done by the American 'Terror Free Tomorrow' research institution (we're talking John McCain, Lee H. Hamilton, William H. Frist, and Thomas H. Kean on its board).

Satisfaction with Ahmadinejad's economic policies, the poll results show, has nearly doubled since last June. 42% now think that "economy is headed toward the right direction," from 27% last June.

Even in terms of inflation and unemployment, which are the focus of all reports, more Iranians now think Ahmadinejad's government is doing a good job. 42% now think Ahmadinejad's policies "have succeeded in reducing unemployment and inflation", whereas in June 33% thought so.

I think with these numbers and the general confidence in Ahmadinejad among the Iranian lower and middle classes, it is going to be extremely hard for anyone, especially a cleric, even Khatami or Karubi, to beat him next year -- and personally, I am quite happy to see him wining a second round. He has impressively progressed and gained experience in all fronts in the past two years after his initial year of gaffes and miscalculations, which were mainly the reason I was against him until about a year and a half ago.

Nowrooz with Kiarostami's 'Iranian Carpet'

Let me wish you a wonderful Iranian new year (Nowrooz) by presenting you a lovely little video, made by Abbas Kiarostami, as part a film titled 'Iranian Carpet', produced by the Farabi Foundation. Watch it and think of Dick Cheney or Hilary Clinton in comparison with the nation that has produced both this carpet and this filmmaker. A little pathetic our American friends look like, don't they?

This year, we will see how those Iranian carpet flowers are going to win over those American bunker-busters.

Iranian Carpet, by Abbas Kiarostami

Mossadegh plays with fire, says New York Times in 1953

The New York Times published the following editorial in 1953, literally two days before the CIA coup against Mohammad Mossadegh. You just need to replace Mossadegh's name with Ahmadinejad and turn the context from nationalization of oil to nuclear programme in order to see how little has changed the way the Americans see those who resist:

Mossadegh plays with fire

Source: The New York Times, Editorial

August 15, 1953

The world has so many trouble spots these days that one is apt to pass over the odd one here and there to preserve a little peace of mind. It would be well, however, to keep an eye, on Iran, where matters are going from bad to worse, thanks to the machinations of Premier Mossadegh.

Some of us used to ascribe our inability to persuade Dr. Mossadegh of the validity of our ideas to the impossibility of making him understand or see things our way. We thought of him as a sincere, well-meaning, patriotic Iranian, who had a different point of view and made different deductions from the same set of facts. We now know that he is a power-hungry, personally ambitious, ruthless demagogue who is trampling upon the liberties of his own people. We have seen this onetime chamption of liberty maintain martial law, curb freedom of the press, radio, speech and assembly, resort to illegal arrests and torture, dismiss the Senate, destroy the power of the Shah, take over control of the army, and now he is about to destroy the Majlis, which is the lower house of Parliament.

His power would seem to be complete, but he has alientated the traditional ruling classes — the aristocrats, landlords, financiers and tribal leaders. These elements are anti-Communist. So is the Shah and so are the army leaders and the urban middle classes. There is a traditional, historic fear, suspicion and dislike of Russian and the Russians. The peasants, who make up the overwhelming mass of the population, are illiterate and nonpolitical. Finally, there is still no evidence that the Tudeh (Communist) party is strong enough or well enough organized, financed and led to take power.

All this simply means that there is no immediate danger of a Communist coup or Russian intervention. On the other hand, Dr. Mossadegh is encouraging the Tudeh and is following policies which will make the Communists more and more dangerous. He is a sorcerer’s apprentice, calling up forces he will not be able to control.

Iran is a weak, divided, poverty-stricken country which possesses an immense latent wealth in oil and a crucial strategic position. This is very different from neighboring Turkey, a strong, united, determined and advanced nation, which can afford to deal with the Russians because she has nothing to fear — and there the West has nothing to fear. Thanks largely to Dr. Mossadegh, there is much to fear in Iran.

U.S. and NED endorse Iranian women's 'One Million Signature' campaign

What bigger picture would the following facts draw, if you were the Iranian government:

a) The infamous National Endowment for Democracy is going to endorse the Iranian women's rights campaign, namely 'One Million Signatures' to a gathering in Ukraine in May.

b) Last year, the Voice of America's website published an editorial promoting and endorsing the One Million Signature campaign in an editorial which, it says, reflects the view of the U.S. government.

c) In 2003 Mehrangiz Kar, one of the founders and leaders of the One Million Signature campaign, was given the NED's Democracy Award personally by Laura Bush.

Abbas Milani: 'Talk to them-but with the purpose of overthrowing them'

Read the following paragraphs from an article,('Exiles: How Iran's Expatriates are Gaming the Nuclear Threat'), published in the New Yorker in 2006, if you want to know who is Abbas Milani and what he is up to:

Hamid Moghadam, a San Francisco businessman who is a co-founder of the Iran Democracy Project, is delighted that a distinctly different political voice has joined the cause. "I thought the groups that were talking to the Administration had an axe to grind," Moghadam said. "I think the problem in this Administration is that it doesn't know much about how things work in that part of the world, so it is misled by people who appear to know what they're doing. There's an absolute vacuum of ideas and thoughtful analysis. That's why we started this thing-and not just with Iranians." He meant McFaul and Diamond. "The only solution to all of this is democracy, but it cannot be dictated, Iraq style, or it will backfire. It can only be encouraged, through dialogue and open economic activity-it sheds light on all the creepy, crawly things. The youth are the key. Once they get used to economic activity and dialogue, they will expect it." More than two-thirds of Iran's population of seventy million is below the age of thirty-five.

"We hope to have some influence," Moghadam continued, referring to the Hoover project. "Condi, after all, is from the Farm." He meant Stanford. Indeed, what Abbas Milani refers to as Hoover's "conservative cachet" has provided considerable entree in the Bush Administration.

[...]

In early fall, Abbas Milani met privately with a number of officials at the State Department and the N.S.C. Milani sees himself as a pragmatist. ("Abbas represents purity of ideology-he's been persecuted by everybody!" Moghadam said.) Milani often remarks that he got to know leading officials in the Islamic Republic quite well when they were all political prisoners together, during the Shah's regime. (Milani was affiliated with a Maoist underground group, and, in 1976, he went to prison for a year. Later, he was purged from a university teaching job by the mullahs.) In contrast to some advocates of engagement, Milani has an antipathy for the regime so visceral that even hard-liners tend to hear him out. He repeatedly told U.S. officials, "The only solution is to get rid of these guys-but, counter intuitively, you have to soften the position." (He exhorted one senior official, "Do as Israel did! In 1980, there were signs all over Iran that said, 'Qom, 230 miles; Jerusalem, 2342 miles.' Yet Israel was helping Iran, sending arms.") Milani was advocating good-will gestures, such as the donation of earthquake-prediction centers, ending the embargo, exerting pressure on the regime for its violation of human rights, establishing diplomatic relations. "Talk to them-but with the purpose of overthrowing them," he urged.

The officials asked Milani what he thought was the best way to proceed on the nuclear track. He told them that he considers Iran's possession of nuclear weapons inevitable, and he is convinced that military strikes against the nuclear sites would rouse Iranians' nationalism and extend the life of the regime for many years. Moreover, he pointed out, allies of the regime-Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt-have risen to new power through the spread of democracy in the Middle East, which had been championed by the Bush Administration. "If there is a military attack on Iran, it will play into the narrative of the West as the aggressor, and all of these radical Islamists will be strengthened." He also urged that the U.S. abandon the idea of anointing anyone as the future leader of Iran, pointing out that the Shah had never lived down the fact that he owed his throne to the C.I.A., which engineered a coup against Iran's nationalist Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, in 1953. "Why would you think anything has changed?"

Mehdi Khalaji: Ahmadinejad promotes chaos, Khamenei approves of WMD against civilans

In order to know more about Mehdi Khalaji and why the infamous Israeli-lobby's think-tank, WINEP, has hired him, here is a paragraph from his latest Policy paper, published online by WINEP:

For the president, the Hidden Imam sanctions his aggressive and defying policy toward the West. More worryingly, certain Shiite traditions state that the Imam’s return will come at a time of world chaos, and Ahmadinezhad seems at times to promote chaos for that end. Meanwhile, for the Supreme Leader, there is no theological or ideological restraint for producing weapons of mass destruction or waging offensive wars. While Iranian diplomats repeat that according to Islamic law it is prohibited to kill innocent civilians or produce nuclear weapons, the theological views of the Supreme Leader are not consistent with this claim.

Transsexuals in Iran: Another BBC Two anti-Iranian propaganda that doesn't exactly work how it should

If you are a Jewish Iranian, living in the U.S. from the age of 6, it is very likely you don't like Ahmadinejad. So of course you would like to show how you hate him and how he is such a liar and how evil the entire government he represents is, in any way you can.

So you decide to attack one of the only positive angles Iran has been reported: Sex-change. And why not connect it to Ahmadinejad's speech in your city's university, Columbia, where he said in Iran homosexuality doesn't exist the same way it does in the U.S. (We all know the united Republican/Democrat anti-Iran front translated that to a denial of homosexuals in Iran.)

Tannaz Eshaghian's 'Be Like Others' (or 'Transsexual in Iran,' as BBC titled it) is a well-made documentary, but it is dishonest and unfair.(Watch it on iPlayer) It basically try to say being gay in Iran is so hard that forces gay men to go through the brutal process of sex-change. So even though the Islamic Republic look surprisingly cool with transsexuality on the surface, it is actually killing scores of gay men by separating them from their family, forcing them into a constant struggle of identity, inflicting physical and psychological pain on them -- and turning them into prostitutes, in the end.

But this is not exactly what every viewer would see in the film. They might ask, for instance, if being gay is so hard, how come Ali (Anoush's boyfriend) doesn't feel marginalized, isolated, or even under any kind of pressure?

Ali likes Anoush even before Anoush does the sex-change operation and while he still has male sexual organs. So if Iran is so cruel to homosexuals and hangs them, how come Ali is still not only walking, but working as a hairdresser and even is so comfortable with his name, face and identity be revealed by the film?

Ali's character, in my mind, is the most important one in the film and he is the one that undoes the main message of them film. He is a living evidence of how homosexuality exists in Iran and how and why it is tolerated, and Eshaghian fails to bring it into her core message of the film.

He shows how homosexuality, as a social phenomenon, doesn't exist in Iran because the lines between being straight and gay has historically been blurred in the Iranian culture. Sexuality has never been forced into strict categories in Iran and this could be quite related to what Judith Butler argues in her work.

But the film is also dishonest in details. The most important part, which is also central to the core of the message, is when she shamelessly mistranslates the young cleric who defends sex-change operations. He says transsexuality has nothing to do with homosexuality which is "immoral and irreligious". But guess how it is translated by Eshaghian to twist his logic: "something unnatural and against religion." Wow!

I don't want to get into the list of funders and producers of the film. But I can't resist the temptation of raising two questions. Especially given the continuous anti-Iran propaganda the BBC Two has produced and showed in the past few years.

a) Why Alexandra Kerry's name (Yes, John Kerry's daughter), as a co-producer is missing from the BBC credits?

b) Why the name of another co-producer, Ilan Ziv, an Israeli film-maker and producers with such films as Human Weapon (on the history of suicide bombing traced back to Iran), People Power (on 'non-violent revolutions around the world' with insight from Gene Sharp, 'a leading expert on non-violent struggles') is also removed from the BBC credits?

NED's Carl Gershman on VOA TV Persian

Just for your information, President of National Endowment for Democracy, Carl Gershman, was on VOA's Persian TV last week and he 'discussed NED's mission and the prospects for democracy in Iran.'

Here is the full-length video:

Reviving the Iranian revolt (The Guardian)

Here is my latest column fro The Guardian's Comment is Free website:

Reviving the Iranian revolt

For sixteen years, Iranian government was in the hands of the Euro-American educated bureaucrats who were gradually departing from the specific subjectivity (rejection of the universals, in Foucault's term) which brought about the Iranian uprising of the 1979. The spectre of modernity slowly started to dominate everything, from the economy to the politics, and the two consequtive administrations picked up a similar project of modernisation which the shah had previously failed to continue, and with it, the gloomy consequences started to wane in too: corruption, incompetence, and socio-economic inequality.

Read the rest and leave comments

Does Chomsky know that Ganji calls for foreign intervention in Iran?

I am really surprised how those, like Noam Chomsky, who are so strongly against any type of American intervention in other countries, can support Akbar Ganji's blatant -- and shameless -- call for intervention in Iran. Can someone just show Ganji's recent article in the Newsweek, titled 'The Fight For Iran's Freedom', to these people who put their valuable signatures under whatever nonsense that Ganji's colonized mind produces?

In this struggle, as in the general fight for democracy and human rights, Iranians need the support of the international community, including the American people. At this moment, the best thing Americans could do for us would be to prevent their own government from launching another war in the Middle East and to urge it to desist from threatening Iran with military strikes and regime change. Such rhetoric only strengthens the Iranian regime and makes our work more difficult.

Iran's pro-democracy movement is rooted in the country's moral, cultural and spiritual values. The fight for freedom is our own responsibility, not that of the Bush administration. Iranians need the American people to support us by lobbying their government to adopt policies that will help the forces of democracy and civil society. The Middle East desperately needs peace, not another war.

Michel Foucault: - The Mythical Leader of the Iranian Revolt

by Michel Foucault

Published in Corriere della Sera, November 26, 1978

Tehran – Iran's year-long period of unrest is coming to a head. On the watchface of politics, the hand has hardly moved. The semi-liberal September government was replaced in November by a half-military one. In fact, the whole country is engulfed by revolt: the cities, the countryside, the religious centres, the oil regions, the bazaars, the universities, the civil servants, and the intellectuals. The privileged rats are jumping ship. An entire century in Iran – one of economic development, foreign domination, modernization, and the dynasty, as well as its daily life and its moral system-- is being put into question.
I cannot write the history of the future, and I am also rather clumsy at forecasting the past. However, I would like to try to grasp what is happening right now, because these days nothing is finished, and the dice is still being rolled. It is perhaps this that is the work of a journalist, but it is true that I am nothing but a neophyte.

Iran was never colonized. In the nineteenth century, the British and the Russians divided it into zones of influence, according to a pre-colonial model. The came oil, the two World Wars,and the Middle East conflict,and the great confrontation in Asia. At one stroke, Iran moved to a pre-colonial position within the orbit of the United States. In a long period of dependency without direct colonization, the country's social structures were not radically destroyed. These social structures were not completely overturned, even by the surge of oil revenue, which certainly enriched the privileged, favoured speculation, and permitted an over-provisioning of the army. The changes did not create social forces, however. The bourgeois of the Bazaar was weakened, and the village communities were shaken by the agrarian reform. However, both of the survived enough to suffer from the dependency and the changes that it brought, but also enough to resist the regime that was responsible for these changes as well.

This same situation had the opposite effect on the political movements. In the half-light of dependency, they too subsisted, but could not sustain themselves as real forces. This was due not only to repression, but also to their own choices. The Communist Party was tied to the USSR, was compromised by the occupation of Azerbaijan under Stalin, and was amphibious in its support of the 'bourgeois nationalism' of Mossadeq. With respect to the National Front, Heir of this same Mossadeq, it has been waiting for fifteen years, without making a move, for the moments of a liberalization that it did not believe to be possible without the permission of the Americans. During this time, some impatient cadres from the Communist Party were becoming technocrats for the regime. They were dreaming of an authoritarian government that would develop a nationalist politics. In short, the political parties had become victims of the 'dependent dictatorship' that was the shah's regime. In the name of realism, some played the card of the independence, others that of freedom.
Because of, on the one hand, the absence of a colonizer-occupier and, on the other, the presence of a national army and a seizable police force, the political-military organizations, which elsewhere organized the struggle for decolonization and which, when the time came, found themselves in a position to negotiate independence and impose the departure of the colonial social phenomenon. This does not mean that the rejection is confused, emotional, or barely self-conscious. On the contrary, it spreads in an oddly effective manner, from the strikes to the demonstrations, from the bazaars to the universities, from the leaflets to the sermons, through shopkeepers, workers, clerics, teachers, and students. For the moment, however, no party, no man, and no political ideology can boast that it represents this movement. Nor can anyone claim to be at its head. This movement has no counterpart and no expression in the political order.

The paradox, however, is that it constitutes a perfectly unified collective will. It is surprising to see this immense country, with a population distributed around two large desert plateaus, a country able to afford the latest technical innovations alongside forms of life unchanged for the last thousand years, a country that yet languishing under censorship and the absence of public freedoms, and yet demonstrating an extraordinary unity in spite of all this. It is the same protest, it is the same will, that is expressed by the doctor from Tehran and a provincial mullah, by an oil worker, b a postal employee, and by a female student wearing the chador. This will includes something rather disconcerting. It is always based on the same thing, a sole and very precise thing, the departure of the shah. But for the Iranian people,this unique thing means everything. This political will years for the end of dependency, the disappearance of the police, the redistribution of oil revenue, an attack on corruption, the reactivation of Islam, another way of life and new relations with the West, with the Arab countries, with Asia, and so forth. Somewhat like the European students in the 1960s, the Iranians want it all, but this 'all' is not a 'liberation of desires.' This political will is one of breaking away from all that marks their country and their daily lives with the presence of global hegemonies. Iranians also view the political parties – liberal or socialist, with either a pro-American tendency or a Marxist inspiration – or, it is better to say, the pontifical scene itself, as still and always the agents of these hegemonies.

Hence, the role of this almost mythical figure, Khomeini. Today, no head of state, no political leader, even supported by the whole media of his country, can boast of being the object of such a personal and intense attachment. These ties are probably the result of three things. Khomeini is not there. For the last fifteen years, he has been living in exile and does not want to return until the shah has left. Khomeini says nothing, nothing other than no – to the shah, to the regime, to dependency. Finally, Khomeini is not a politician. There will not be a Khomeini party; there will not be a Khomeini government. Khomeini is the focal point of a collective will. What is the unwavering intransigence seeking? Is it the end of a form of dependency where, behind the Americans, an international consensus and a certain 'state of the world' can be recognized? Is it the end of a dependency of which the dictatorship is the direct instrument, but for which the political manoeuvres could well be the indirect means? It is not only a spontaneous uprising that lacks political organization, but also movement that wants to disengage itself from both external domination and internal politics.

After I left Iran, the question that I was constantly asked was, of course, 'Is this revolution?' (This is the price at which, in France, an entire sector of public opinion becomes interested in that which is 'not about us.') I did not answer, but I wanted to say that it is not a revolution, not in the literal sense of the term, not a way of standing up and straightening things out. It is the insurrection of men with bare hands who want to lift the fearful weight, the weight of the entire world order that bears down on each of us, but more specifically on them, these oil workers and peasants at the frontiers of empires. It is perhaps the first great insurrection against global systems, the form of revolt that is the most modern and the most insane.

One can understand the difficulties facing the politicians. They outline solutions, which are easier to find than people say. They range from a pure and simple military regime to a constitutional transformation that would lead from a regency to a republic. All of them are based on the elimination of the shah. What is it that the people want? Do they really want nothing more? Everybody is quite aware that they want something completely different. This is why the politicians hesitate to offer them simply that, which is why the situation is at an impasse. Indeed, what place can be given, within the calculations of politics, to such a movement, to a movement through which blows the breath of a religion that speaks less of the hereafter than of the transfiguartion of this world?

Ramin Jahanbegloo hides his NED service on CBC's The Hour

Ramin Jahanbegloo claims, in a recent interview on CBC's The Hour, he was never involved in anything political and he was only arrested because he was a Canadian as well as an Iranian citizen and that they told him he was a spy only because he carried a Canadian passport. What an honest and innocent man!

Jahanbegloo on CBC's The Hour

But seriously, if serving at a federally funded program, known as the Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellows Program, at the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is not political activity, then what is political activity?

If a sovereign country is not supposed to prosecute or at least be suspicious of someone who has served at the heart of its enemy's intelligence apparatus (Allen Weinstein, a founder of the NED' said once that a 'lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA,' then what is sovereignty?

If ramin jahenbegloo was never involved in politics, then how one could ever describe his writings for the NED's journal, journal of Democracy:

• Jahanbegloo, Ramin. "Pressure From Bellow." Journal of Democracy 14, no. 1 (January 2003): 126.

• Jahanbegloo, Ramin. "the Role of the Inttelectuals." Journal of Democracy 11, no. 4 (October 2000): 135.

Jahanbegloo's ties with NED is so public now that it's unimaginable how a CBC producer have not possibly run into it. Why everyone is ignoring to mention this, while it was exactly what the iranian authorities publically anounced for Ramin Jahanegloo's arrest, and also Jahanbegloo himslef confirmed it in an interview in Tehran after his release?

Who do you think have the guts to raise this finally in Canada?

P.S: The CBC had used my photo of Jahanbgeloo on the screen in the back, without my knowledge and since the CBC is a commercial channel, it has violated the Creative Commons license, attributed to it. If we can't sue the CBC for their PR-style journalism toward Jahanbegloo, maybe we can sue them for using this picture. Anyone? :)

Clinton is dangerous for Iran

Given the incredible influence the pro-Israel politicians and consultants have on Hillary Clinton's campaign, I think she would be quite dangerous for Iran (and the rest of the Middle East), even though, I don't think, she would be much different from Obama as to internal Amercian politics.

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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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 w