Editor: Myself

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?"

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

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? :)

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.

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.

How BBC World Service was used by Churchill in 1953 coup in Iran

BBC World Service is celebrating its 75th anniversary. They must be happy about such achievement and they deserve to.

But for the rest of world two aspects of its operations, at least, are very problematic:

a) That its funding is entirely coming from The Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and therefore it affects the perception of its editorial independence among the audiences

b) That history shows how such close ties with the government has actually produced embarrassing moments. The best example for that could be the BBC's role in relation to the CIA-MI6-engineered coup against the Iranian prime minister, Mohamad Mossadegh, in 1953 which is documented in Stephen Kinzer's book, All the Shah's Men:

Roosevelt told the Shah that he was in Iran on behalf of the American and British secret services, and that this would be confirmed by a code word the Shah would be able to hear on the BBC the next night.

Churchill had arranged that the BBC would end its broadcast day by saying not "It is now midnight," as usual, but "It is now exactly midnight." Such assurances were hardly necessary, the Shah replied. (p. 9-10)

Don't you think this would make the whole population of Iran always suspicious of the BBC's journalism?

'Anti-Western' Ahmadinejad permits Chris De Burgh to perform in Tehran

Yesterday, Reuters reported that pop-musician, Chirs De Burgh, is going to perform live in Tehran in early summer next year with the Iranian pop-music band, Arian.

Arian's manager, Mohsen Rajabpour, who runs a record label in Tehran, has said to Reuters that the ministry of Culture has approved of the performance and has officially given the license for the performance.

This is hugely significant in that it is the first time Iranian state is officially allowing a 'Western' non-Iranian pop-music act to happen and also because it is Ahmadinejad's government that is behind that.

So you would expect this to be at least covered by those media outlets which have always been interested in showing how Iran treats the 'Western' culture, etc.

But surprisingly enough, the news has not been covered at all in the British-funded BBC Persian, US-funded Radio Farda or Dutch-funded Radio Zamaneh. I wonder if it is just a matter of accident or it has political reasons.

It's not a secret that these media outlets are usually giving a big amount of time and space to reports about Ahmadinejad's alleged anti-Western actions and rhetoric. But ignoring such an important development is just strange.

Is it because they are not comfortable to report on something that counters their ideological discourse that Ahmadinejad is turning Iran into Taliban?

Roger Hardy's dillema: Working for Foreign Office or the British public

Roger Hardy was at SOAS last week. He has been a Middle East expert and analyst for the BBC for the past two decades. (So either he has started with the BBC when he was a teenager, or he is actually older than what appears.)

I wanted to ask a question that I didn't get a chance for and I'm raising it here now.

A lot of stuff that Hardy and many other journalists at the BBC doing is also being used by the BBC World Service. In other words, their salary must come from both entities as their service is used by the both.

Now, given that the BBC World Service is wholly funded by the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office, unlike the rest of the BBC that is funded directly by the British citizen's license fees, How can Roger Hardy and other journalists in the same situation reconcile these two sources of funding and thereby control? What are their mechanisms to guarantee their indepndence, while they are actually on the payroll of the UK government?

The other side of the question, which is even more important, would be that how this question of independence from the government is perceived by the world wide BBC audiences? What effect such perception, right or wrong, would have on they way the people see the BBC journalists?

I would suggest to rethink and review the kidnapping of Alan Johnston a while ago in this light. Maybe things would look a bit differently.

Who is a 'populist'?

Continuing from my post about the politics behind the use of the word 'moderate' in the Anglo-saxon media, today I'm going to reveal the meaning of 'populist.'

Whenever you see the word 'populist' in description of a politician, you can change it to "an elected politician who has some socialist elements in its economic views."

No matter how much popular a capitalist politician, elected or unelected, is and what kind of methods they use to appeal to the poor, they are never described as 'populist.'

When politicians love journalists

I beg to say that the main premise on which Sadeq Saba's new analysis is built upon is just false.

In his piece about the harsh criticism against Ahmadinejad, published in a newspaper in iran called Jomhoori-e Eslami, he argues that support for Ahmadinejad is diminishing among within the senior leadership of Iran.

That's becoming an increasingly popular theme these days and the way I read it is that the U.S./UK official line against Iran is slightly shifting towards exploiting the remaining limited potentials of Rafsanjanists in breaking the political unity and common will behind the nuclear programme and particularly the decision not to give up on the enrichment.

The British/American alliance has now publicly started to give a louder voice to the Rafsanjanists inside Iran (from Shirin Ebadi to Hassan Rohani) and outside (almost all Democrat-leaning figures such as Abbas Milani and Akbar Ganji) in order to widen the potential differences of opinions among the key decision-making figures and institutions.

So it doesn't matter to Mr. Saba that painting Jomhouri-e Eslami as a newspaper that reflects Khamenei's positions is totally false. One only needs to go back and see during the previous elections and afterwards it has always been Rafsanjani who has enjoyed the full support of the newspaper, not Ahmadinejad.

In this context, it is very predictable to see such attacks from one of Rafsanjani's most faithful media allies. And it's not event the first time Jomhouri-e Eslami is diong this. (See an eariler report from January 2007 for example.)

What is happening in the past few months is that Khamenei is becoming more and more supportive of Ahmadinejad in private and public, at the same time that he keeps his distance with him. So Khamenei supports him more while he also criticised him more. (For instance, read the transcript of his speech for the government cabinet a few months ago.)

Mind you that I didn't vote for Ahmadinejad and I have my criticism of many of his actions and rhetoric. However, I can't close my eyes on such obviously inaccurate and politically-motivated journalism that has shamelessly become so common in the Euro-American media.

Apparently Washington post's Robin Wright has become their role model.

What is censorship

I have come up with my own definition of censorship lately and I have used in my recent presentations in Ottawa and in New York City. Let me know what you think about it:

Censorship is controlling the reality by constructing various versions of it.

I think this could provide a start for a different way of analysing and talking about censorship in the media. Especially because it is inclusive enough to cover sophisticated form of censorship such as embedded journalism and disinformation campaign as well as the more primitive forms such as banning publications etc.

Tough times for the Iranian 'Blogfather'

I was in Canada two weeks ago for a panel discussion in a Canadian organization. So it was a good chance to raise the issue of free speech, both in Iran and in the 'West.'

The following is an article that was published in Ottawa Citizen when I was there. (Direct link to the article)

The Blogfather

Times are hard for Iran's online free-speech pioneer NN

Don Butler
The Ottawa Citizen

Friday, November 02, 2007

These are trying times for the Blogfather of Iran.

Beset by legal troubles, abandoned by former allies and angered by the West's hostile characterization of his native land, Hossein Derakhshan could be forgiven if the topic he is to address in Ottawa today -- the role of the media in democratic development -- isn't top of mind.

The 32-year-old Iranian Canadian, known as the Blogfather for his role in kickstarting Iran's blogging revolution, flew in from Britain for a panel discussion this afternoon sponsored by the International Development Research Centre.

But Mr. Derakhshan has more pressing matters to attend to while in Canada. Mehdi Khalaji, a visiting Iranian scholar at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, has just filed a $2-million defamation suit for critical comments about him on Mr. Derakhshan's groundbreaking blog, Editor: Myself. So now the Blogfather needs a lawyer.

"It would cost me so much money to find a lawyer, and so much time," Mr. Derakhshan moaned this week from London, where he has just begun an MA program in media studies. "It's really devastating."

After Mr. Khalaji's lawyers filed notice of libel in August, the Florida-based firm that was hosting Mr. Derakhshan's blog terminated his account, forcing him to migrate to a new Internet provider.

That Mr. Derakhshan's blog was shut down by an American company is more than a little ironic. It is, after all, the same blog that Iran's regime, so reviled in the West, has been blocking since 2004. (It still reaches a limited number of Iranians by e-mail or other roundabout means.)

And because he visited Israel last year in a high-profile effort to foster better understanding between Israelis and Iranians, Mr. Derakhshan can no longer return to his homeland without risking arrest.

But that's how things have been going lately for Mr. Derakhshan, whose former friends have cut him loose for his outspoken opposition to western attempts to portray Iran as a threat to global security.

So worried is he about the demonization of Iran that he has ceased all criticism of his homeland in English. (He still offers critiques, but only in his Persian blog.) "We should keep our internal problems to ourselves for a while until the threat is gone," he argues.

This summer, he shut down a website documenting censorship in Iran because he feared it would add fuel to the anti-Iranian campaign, though he says he may revive it later, in Persian only.

He has criticized NGOs such as Reporters Without Borders and Human Rights Watch, saying their campaigns against censorship and human rights violations in Iran are often counter-productive and serve American interests more than those of Iranians.

He has even defended Iran's right to possess nuclear weapons for defensive purposes, and has publicly declared that he will return to defend his native land if the West attacks.

All this has left him isolated from the community of politically active expatriate Iranians who formerly supported him. Some bloggers have removed links to his blog. Others have actively urged readers to boycott him. Interview requests from western-based Iranian media have dried up, as have invitations to ex-pat events and panel discussions.

It's quite a change for someone once widely viewed as a free-speech techno-hero. The darkly handsome Mr. Derakhshan has been sympathetically profiled in such diverse publications as Wired and the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. More than 7,700 people have watched his interview on CBC's The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos on YouTube.

Mr. Derakhshan arrived in Canada in December 2000 with his Iranian-Canadian wife (the two have since split) keen to experience the West's vaunted economic and political freedoms.

Within nine months, writing from the kitchen table of his Toronto apartment, he had started his blog, using the nom-de-blog Hoder, a contraction of his first and last names.

Mr. Derakhshan, who wrote about the Internet and digital culture for newspapers in Iran, was attracted to blogging by the freedom it offered. "I didn't want to be censored by the publishers and editors in Iran."

At the time, blogging was unknown in Iran. But Mr. Derakhshan soon sent it into overdrive by writing simple instructions that let Iranians blog in their own Persian language.

He also promoted new tools and technologies, linked to other blogs and bugged his journalist friends in Iran "to use this amazing technology to bypass the local editors and the limiting structure of the Iranian press."

When he started out, he hoped there would be 100 Iranian bloggers within a year. Instead, there were thousands. "I was very pessimistic," he acknowledges.

Today, Iran is one of the world's top blogging nations, with an estimated 800,000 blogs, though not all are active.

Though some bloggers have been arrested or harassed, the vast majority are left in peace, Mr. Derakhshan says. Even President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has a blog.

The regime tolerates blogging, Mr. Derakhshan says, because unlike technologies such as satellite TV, it is not primarily associated with secular, anti-government forces.

Most Iranian bloggers are neither secular nor opponents of the regime, he says. "That's why the government embraced it rather than rejecting it. They don't see blogs as a destabilizing medium or technology."

Blogging has helped expand Iranian civil society, he believes, at least among the country's wealthier, more educated urban residents.

"Within this small fraction of the whole population, the effect has been quite significant, because it has opened up a whole new space for public debate. It has significantly affected public intellectuals because it has helped them engage with a different sort of audience in a much more interactive and lively way."

Though Mr. Derakhshan initially blogged only in Persian, he added an English blog about a year later, in part to show the world how swiftly blogging was catching on in Iran.

But even as acclaim for his pioneering work poured in, Mr. Derakhshan's enthusiasm for his new western home was waning.

As a student in Iran, he says, "I never understood or had any kind of interest in Marxist theories. As soon as I arrived in Canada, after maybe six months and maybe three months of working full time in a company, I realized what he was saying."

As his critiques of western society have become more pointed, he has been heartened by supportive messages from some non-political ex-pats that echo his own journey. "They left Iran with the same hopes and dreams that when they came to Canada or the U.S., everything would be perfect there," he says. "You would have such a happy life.

"When they see the nuances and realities of things in the West, they realize it's not like what they were thinking. They start to question many of these presumptions and presuppositions."

Since emigrating to Canada, Mr. Derakhshan has returned to Iran only once, during the 2005 elections that chose Mr. Ahmadinejad as president.

As he was leaving the country, he was detained and interrogated by officials from the ministry of intelligence about things he had written in his blog.

Their concerns included disrespectful comments about Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, opinions about Iran's nuclear program that were "out of the government's line," and his irreligious views. His interrogators were also unhappy with him for helping Iranians bypass Internet censorship.

Officials ultimately forced him to sign an apology before allowing him to leave.

His trip to Israel in January 2006 appears to have cemented his status as persona non grata. When he appeared on an Iranian news channel recently, the producers received a call from Tehran "asking why did you invite this guy and please do not do it again," he says.

"This is very frustrating to me. They are so paranoid that they can't distinguish their friends from their enemies.

"The fact that I have been to Israel is just enough for them to rule out any possibility that I could be genuinely defending my people and the legitimacy of my government."

While he's a critic of Mr. Ahmadinejad, that doesn't mean he condones the way he's treated in the West.

"It's really, really unfair and wrong and unethical the way they treat him. At the end of the day, he's elected by my people and he represents Iran, for better or for worse."

Mr. Derakhshan's inability to visit his homeland gnaws at him. "I can never have the experience of talking to ordinary Iranians on the street," he laments.

He thinks the West is missing a golden opportunity to build bridges to the Muslim world by isolating and demonizing the Iranian regime, which he insists is not a threat to others.

If the West removed its existential threat to Iran, he's convinced its political discourse would broaden. Iran, he says, could be "an amazing role model for the whole Muslim world to stop being reactionary toward the West and start some sort of positive interaction."

Iran's Islamic republic is still a very new concept and remains a work in progress, he says. Given the chance, "the major force that could democratize the region is a successful Islamic republic rather than an oppressive, colonizing United States."

A year ago, Mr. Derakhshan was convinced an attack on Iran was likely. Now, he thinks the risk is minimal, mainly because western nations have invested so much time and energy in economic sanctions.

Western politicians also realize a military attack would be "counterproductive by any calculation," he says. "Even the most ideologically driven ones, like Cheney, have realized that they wouldn't gain anything from any kind of military clash with Iran at the moment."

As Iran's Blogfather struggles to gain purchase in a time of trouble, that, at least, is something to hold on to.

- - -

FAST FACTS

The Event: A roundtable discussion on media and democratic government features Iranian-Canadian Hossein Derakhshan, known as the Blogfather for his role in kickstarting Iran's blogging revolution.

The Lawsuit: Mr. Derakhshan needs a lawyer, as he is being sued for $2 million by Iranian scholar Mehdi Khalaji, who accuses Mr. Derakhshan of defaming him.

The Context: Despite acclaim from human rights groups, and being unwelcome in Iran thanks to a 2006 trip he made to Israel, Mr. Derakhshan finds his enthusiasm for the West waning.

- - -

BLOGFATHER BASICS

Bio: Hossein Derakhshan, a.k.a. Hoder. Born in 1975 in Iran to a religious family. Emigrated to Canada with his former wife in 2000. Settled in Toronto, where he started a Persian-language blog, Sardabir:khodam ("Editor: Myself") in 2001. Added an English-language version in 2002. Dual citizen of Canada and Iran. Now pursuing MA in media studies at University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies.

Claim to fame: One of the first people to blog in Farsi, the Persian language. Credited with sparking the blogging revolution in Iran by disseminating simple instructions on how to adapt free online tools to handle Persian characters.

Blogging in Iran: Estimates of the number of blogs range upwards of 800,000, though not all are actively maintained. Relatively few are political. Blogs about culture, the arts and technology are popular.

Prominent blogger: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Harassment: Iranian regime has blocked Mr. Derakhshan's blog since 2004. During visit to Iran in 2005, was detained, questioned about the blog's content and forced to sign an apology. Because he visited Israel in January 2006, can no longer enter Iran.

Shifting views: Has ceased external criticism of Iranian regime because of concern over western efforts to demonize Iran. Believes reform debate should continue, but internally. Outspoken opponent of military action against Iran; supports Iranian nuclear weapons for defensive purposes.

Legal troubles: Served with $2-million defamation suit by Mehdi Khalaji, an Iranian fellow at U.S. think-tank, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, for critical comments posted on his blog.

Appearance in Ottawa: Hossein Derakhshan will take part in a roundtable discussion on the media and democratic development from 1 to 3 p.m. today at IDRC's head office, 150 Kent St. Other panellists are Chilean journalist Alejandra Matus, South African journalist Mathatha Tsedu and Humaira Habib, who runs a women's community radio station in Afghanistan. Registration to the event is closed. For information, call 613-236-6163, ext. 2244.

Controling the controller

We had a seminar today: 'Media in transitional societies' by Professor Colin Sparks from Westminster University.

He was trying to "explain" the role of media in transitional societies, with a focus on China, Russia, and Poland and I think the very source of my problem with it lies in the word "explaining."

if there are three methods of research (or ways of knowing), i.e. description, explanation, and interpretation, I think at the core of the first two lies the ultimate but latent goal of "control."

We explain things to be able to control them, and in this context, the fact that this approach has been the dominant approach toward sciences, even human science, since the Enlightenment in Europe is very telling. They wanted to explain better their colonies to control them better. Explanation is always about control.

What the lecturer was doing today was an attempt to explain the relationship between the media and the masses in a transitional society, or how the media controls the masses in those societies. In other words, he was trying to control the very control the media applies on the masses.

Solidarity Iran and the State Department

Do you think it is just an accident that almost 8 out of 10 faces you see on VOA's Persian TV as experts or guests are also from Mohsen Sazgera and Shahriar Ahy's Solidairty Iran group?

Given that VOA is directly funded and guided by the State Department, couldn't one suggest that the Solidarity Iran is indeed a State Department project?

Haleh is free, now what happens to Hannah Esfandiariُ

My most recent article for the Guardian is about the effect of U.S. economic sanctions on the Iranian academia and how Haleh Esfandiari's case comes to this picture.

Two sides of sanctions

On a sunny day in Washington, DC, my imaginary American scholar, Hannah Esfandiari, was sitting in her Kalorama-located house, opening a letter she had just received from Tehran, Iran.

It was a job offer from a prominent think tank at the heart of the Islamic Republic's policy-making machine. Her main job was going to be establishing contacts with Americans dissidents, scholars and activists and inviting them to Tehran to speak to high-ranking Iranian policy-makers, top officers of the Revolutionary Guards and the intelligence ministry.

But she could not take the job offer. Not because she was afraid of being charged with assisting a "state sponsor of terrorism" and perhaps being sent to Guantanamo Bay, but simply because, based on the Iranian Transactions Regulations, it would be illegal for her or any other American to sign any contract with, accept any funds from, or give any service to an Iranian citizen or organisation, wherever in the world. Violating that law could cost her up to 20 years of jail and a $250,000 fine.

Read more...

Robin Wright lies and Washington Post calls it journalism

Someone please tell me if Robin Wright is a journalist or Haleh Esfandiari's PR manager. How dare she can get away with such blatant lie that "Esfandiari and the [Woodrow Wilson] center have long denied receiving any U.S. funding for the lecture series she runs."

The about page of the Woodrow Wilson Center reads "Approximately one third of the Center's operating funds come annually from an appropriation from the U.S. government."

And then, Lee Hamilton writes in his report to the Congress (PDF) that Woodrow Wilson Center continues joint ventures with American and non-American organisations that are "mutually beneficial" and "extends the reach and the effectiveness of the Center’s work."

And guess what joint ventures the Middle East Programme (run by Haleh Esfandiari) continues to work with

Middle East Program conferences with the Hoover Institution on Iran, with USIP for Iraqi women, and with the National Endowment for Democracy on Islamism and democracy in Muslim countries;

Robin Wright deserves to be fired for such obvious false, unfair and partial way of reporting that she consistently showed during Esfandiari's arrest in Iran. How can the Washington Post continue to stand such clear violation of the most basic rules of journalism?

'Free Haleh' and its links to 'pro-democracy' projects

Did you know that 'Free Haleh', the most active online campaign about Esfandiari's prosecution in Iran, is run by the pro-Bush, pro-Iraqi invasion, Zainab Al-Swaiji of the American Islamic Council? The other noteworthy fact is that Free Haleh is hosted by Middle East Youth (its staff), another neo-conservative-leaning 'pro-democracy' project.

Even Israel prepares to live with a 'Nuclear-Enabled' Iran

Reports on an increased possibility of a US attack on Iran are raising some serious concerns. But I don't think it is anything but a psy-op, possibly this time by the liberals to frighten and provoke the Iranian government either to give up the enrichment or to do something stupid that could become a pretext for the more severe UN sanctions.

There is absolutely nothing Bush could gain from such attack and this is not something that only the liberals are saying. But even the most radical but realistic anti-Iranian policy makers in Israel, such as Avigdor Liberman, or in Washington, such as Patrick Clawson, acknowledge the fact that military attack is neither going to stop Iran from its nuclear programme, nor will it weaken or destabilise the government in any way.

And then it's also the Iranian response that could actually destabilise the markets everywhere leading to a serious energy crisis that could anger the EU, China and India and widen the split between the U.S. and the rest of the industrial world.

Knowing all this, Iran has carefully been censoring any news about an imminent attack to undo the psy-op and at the same time, all Iranian opposition, even Reza Pahlavi, have repeatedly said they were against military attack and now have no choice other showing some public contempt to save their integrity.

I suspect soon the U.S. would have no choice but to accept a nuclear Iran, the way Israel, according to senior strategist Ephraim Kam, is ready (PDF) to do so.

It is time to let the world know about Ephraim Kam's report which I am surprised why the Anglosaxon media has never paid enough attention to.

In case you haven't read it, here is the most important part of it:

Living with a Nuclear-Enabled Iran

The conclusion is threefold:

1. The United States, Israel, and other countries must do their utmost to prevent Iran from achieving a nuclear capability, since once Iran has nuclear weapons it will be much harder (and militarily impossible) to effect any rollback and disarm it.
2. The military move must be included in steps to be considered, both as an option in itself and as a means of increasing pressure on Iran.
3. At the same time, these countries will have to prepare for a scenario in which Iran obtains nuclear weapons, all the while maintaining efforts to block this very outcome.

In preparing for this scenario, Israel must:

• Strengthen its deterrent capability towards Iran. Israel currently has limited deterrence against Iran's recourse to conventional weapons and terrorism, based on its strategic capabilities and its relations with the United States. This capability may ebb if Iran obtains nuclear weapons. Therefore, Israel must use the years until Iran attains nuclear capability and take additional steps to bolster its deterrence against a nuclear attack, including: convincing Iran that a nuclear attack on Israel may fail because of Israel’s anti-missile system; strengthening its deterrent credibility against the Iranian regime, and convincing Iran that should Israel be attacked with nuclear weapons, it would retain a response capability that would exact a heavy price from Iran.

• Strengthen strategic cooperation with the United States against Iran. Israel's aim is that the US administration will make it clear to Iran that any Iranian nuclear attack on Israel or its other allies will be viewed as an attack on the US itself, which would force it to act without reservation and with its full strategic strength against Iran. Israel will have to reexamine the possibility of bolstering its deterrent capability by entering into a defense treaty with the United States and/or joining NATO at the appropriate time.

• Take steps, in collaboration with the United States and other countries, to limit risks – beyond the threat of a nuclear attack – resulting from Iran obtaining nuclear capability.

• Reexamine its policy of nuclear ambiguity. Israel would be best served by maintaining nuclear ambiguity, but it is possible that conditions will emerge that will force it to relinquish this policy, such as the conduct of the Iranian regime, its need to increase its deterrence and clarify its red lines, or potential channels of communication with Iran on the nuclear issue.

• Consider the possibility of agreeing to the idea of a nuclear weapons-free Middle East, as a means of preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear arms or of disarming Iran.

• Examine the possibility of a peace agreement with the Syrian regime, at the right time and with conditions that are acceptable to Israel, in the hope that this leads to limiting Syria's close ties with Iran and an end to its military support of Hizbollah. If there is a possibility of a peace agreement with Syria, which would entail further warming of Israel’s relations with other Arab countries, the effect of Iran’s militant approach will also be reduced, and there may even be dialogue between Israel and Iran. But even if such dialogue does not develop, it will be hard to assume that under such regional conditions Iran would decide to launch a nuclear attack against Israel.

Can Israel live with a nuclear Iran? Possibly, but it is hard to anticipate this situation. Certain conditions – some of which are not yet extant – may help to soften this reality, and reduce the Iranian threat and the uncertainty that it contains.

These include:

• Collecting credible intelligence that Iran is not planning to use its nuclear weaponry against Israel.

• Obtaining a clear American obligation to retaliate against Iran with a nuclear strike should Iran use nuclear weapons against Israel.

• Arriving at an assessment in Israel that is based on clear, credible indicators that Israel's strategic capability effectively deters Iran from recourse to nuclear weapons.

• Seeing more moderate officials join the circle of decision-makers in Iran.

Finally, if Iran obtains nuclear weapons, this would obligate Israel to try to build up a stable deterrent capability against Iran, which will prevent unintentional deterioration to nuclear confrontation. As yet there are no accepted rules of behavior in a nuclear environment between Israel and Iran, there is no communication and no dialogue, and there is insufficient understanding of the set of considerations and the decision-making processes of the other side. Such uncertainty is liable to increase the risks of miscalculation, overreaction, escalation of crises, and difficulty stopping deterioration in time.

Israel thus has a critical need to try to build channels of direct communication with Iran. Even if indirect, these could allow fostering rules of the game and pursuing confidence building measures in a nuclear environment and help guard against nuclear deterioration. Assuming that Iran is also interested in preventing miscalculations by the US and Israel, which may lead to deterioration and heavy internal damage, the possibility of generating such channels of communication, possibly via European governments, is not unreasonable.

Haleh Esfandiari and NED

I know speaking against Haleh Esfandiari is like suicide these days. After all, with the help of her mostly American and Iranian neoliberal allies (especially Washington Post's Robin Wright whose love for Esfandiari, for some reason, surpasses that of Esfandiari's own daughter), has become a symbolic victim of the 'most repressive regime on the planet.'

But let's be honest for a moment. If an American scholar served , in Tehran, as the head of a prominent think-tank, very close to the heart of the Iranian policy making machine, and started travelling back and forth to the U.S. and tried to establish contacts and with dissident Americans (let's say the leftists) and invited them to Tehran to speak for highest Iranian policy making, top officers of the Revolutionary Guards and intelligence officers, how would the U.S., even the most liberal one like Jimmy Carter, would treat him or her?

On top of that, Haleh Esfandiari was the first Iranian fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) in 1995, as the first group of NED fellows. (She was followed by Hossein Bashirieh, Ramin Jahanbegloo, Siamak Namazi, Ali Afshari and Manouchehr Mohammadi ever since.)

And we all know about NED's roles and functions in countries where the U.S. wants to bring about its favorite governments such as in Venezuella and the rest. Some even suggest that the links between the CIA and NED are undeniable. "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA," says Allen Weinstein, who helped draft the legislation establishing NED in 1991. (Read the entire Le Monde Diplomatique's article on the links between NED and the CIA. )

Given what we know about NED today, I believe, anyone in any country who has had any ties with NED and its affiliate organisations (International Republican Institute, National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, American Center for International Labor Solidarity and Center for International Private Enterprise) deserves to be charged and fairly and justly prosecuted.

I emphasize on the process to be just and fair because I think Iran has sometimes ignored some of its own laws when it comes to such cases. For example, withholding Esfandiari's passport and therefore keeping her in Iran without prosecuting her was totally wrong and illegal.

But more or less the rest of her case was handled fairly and legally, given the laws in Iran, that like like in many countries post 9/11, give the right to the judge to extend the time a detainee can be held without charges. But Esfandiari had a lawyer, has contacts with her mother and, at it appears, was treated well in detention.

Now perhaps Danny Postel would like to write another piece for openDemocracy and compare me this time with Adolf Hitler. I wonder what he and other Christopher Hitchens clones think about the NED.

Robert Tait markets Rafsanjani to Americans

I'm glad to see The Guardian's Robert Tait now officially showing his Rafsanjanist side these days. Two of his recent pieces are particularly revealing:

"Iran hangs 30 over 'US plots'", a shameless piece of false reporting that tries to connect the execution of murderers, assassins and rapists to Iran's concerns over the real American plots to destabilise the government exploiting the capacities within the Iranian civil society.

The Observer editors -- who are equally to be blamed for that shameless piece of propaganda -- seem to even doubt that U.S. has any plots against Iran and therefore put it in quotation marks.

The other Robert Tait's piece (Khomeini 'sought to drop Death to America chant') in The Guardian is yet another clear pro-Rafsanjani report that we see these days from Tehran-based correspondents since Ahmadinejad came to power.

Tait, who I don't